After six beautiful blocks adorned by three story brick homes racing the trees with changing leaves to the bright light of the sun I managed a seat at a high table at Kramer’s Afterwords Café. “Anything to drink?” she asked still writing down the veggie huevos rancheros I ordered for brunch. “What kinds of tea do you have?” I asked. She listed several assorted tea flavors and as soon ashes said green, I smiled and asked for the green tea.
I wasn’t more than three pages into the next chapter of the book I managed to ease not my crossbody bag before she was back with a small wooden tray complete with a teacup, pot of green tea, and a container boasting a variety of sweeteners. I was expecting a mug of hot water, saucer, tea bag, and assumed sweetener options were on my little hightop table near the fake plant. I sat and looked at the presentation of my green tea, the more than what I expected or would have even know I could have requested. I took a few pictures for sharing, and sent up an omg(oh my God) and a tyj (thank you Jesus). Another minute passed as I texted a sweet friend who was a recipient of the picture of my green tea. We both agreed the presentation was absolutely beautiful.
I poured my first cup of tea and placed the deep olive green ceramic pot back on the tray as to restore the beauty of the presentation. As I sipped my tea I couldn’t help but wonder, what if I had been so enamored by the presentation of my request that I didn’t bother to touch it or taste it? What if I was in so much awe of the cup, the sweeteners, the teapot, the little container for creamer, that I didn’t touch it, wanting to preserve it instead of enjoying it? What if I was so afraid that the pot was too hot and I’d spill tea everywhere or drop it that I let it all stay the way it was given to me? What if it was too risky?
Ridiculous! I know!
Yet, if I am honest, sometimes I do that, and maybe you do too, with the gift of grace. Sometimes I convince myself it is so much more than I anticipated, requested, think I am worthy of, that perhaps I should just let it be. Maybe I should wait for something a little less _______. Sometimes I wonder if I am doing this whole thing the way I imagine God in all His grace would want me to or if I’m one loose grip away from dropping it and making a complete mess of it all. As I sipped my tea and read my book I was reminded that’s not how grace works at all. That’s not how God works at all.
Grace will always be more than we can imagine. No matter how sweet we think it is, it will be sweeter. No matter how enough we think it is, it will always be more than enough. No matter the prayer being for this one thing- pay this one bill, get this one new client, have enough for this one vacation, our kiddo to pass this one test, partner to get this one call back for the job interview, the doctor to say this one test came back and our cancer is gone, grace will do more than the one thing. God will do more than the one thing. He is the God who does exceedingly, abundantly above all we could ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). We just, okay I will speak for me, I just, forget this. I forget that He’s so committed to my best that He’s not limited to my at least, my just one, and He wants me to come boldly with my requests to Him (Hebrews 4:16).
Grace will not let us mess things up. I mean it will let us get messy, but it will not let us completely mess things up. I say this as I round out year 5 of a stretch of life that has felt exhausting and messy more days than not. If I am honest with you, myself, and sweet grown man Jesus, it still feels very messy, untidy, broken, uncertain, nothing like the life I liked so much and worked so hard for in my twenties and thought would just at least keep pace in my thirties. Talk about a plot twist! It still takes a good deal of grit and grace to keep showing up, to keep actually using what I know are exceptionally beautiful gifts that God has given me, even if there are times those gifts are misunderstood, mocked, undervalued, or straight up rejected.
Grace is so acutely aware of our humanity, our propensity to sell ourselves and it short. Our struggle with being works in progress, one that we often prolong in a foolhardy quest for perfection, is so on the radar of grace. Our comfort to look at what grace offers us and then place it on our own altars of insecurity, trauma, anxiety, fear, hurt, is so not missed by grace, so not missed by God.
I’m learning that when I do choose to take the risk and go all in for what grace has for me and has perfectly equipped me for, I am good. When you chose to take the risk and go all in for what grace has for you and has perfectly equipped you for, you are good. We are good. After I got over the beauty of the presentation of my request at the coffee shop, after I snapped a few pictures to share, I drank that tea and it was so so good. Furthermore, my expectations for my meal were amped up. I mean if they were fancy for a simple cup of green tea I could not imagine what the vegetarian huevos rancheros was going to be like!
Grace makes sure that we are good. Read that again. Don’t read into it what’s not there. I did not say grace makes sure we feel good. Maybe we will feel good, maybe we won’t, but we will be good. Grace will make sure of that. As we watch it in this current season of out lives we can expect it to do the same in the future. We can amp up our request because grace is always gonna do more anyway and we can trust that grace will absolutely handle every single thing now and then just as it has before.
My prayer for you this week is that whatever grace has set before you, whatever beautiful gifts have been placed in you, that you go all in. That you adjust your expectations, and as they are superseded you don’t become afraid that this is as good as it gets and keep your distance or become a skeptic, but that you get going and go all in. That you don’t worry that you will mess things up or that you are about to max out your grace card. Not possible. You will mess up, that’s that whole humanity thing, but grace has accounted for that and has you covered.
With Love,
Grit + Grace