All Is Grace

I am never more aware of my status in the eyes of the world than at the end of each year.

Christmas in Western countries is about families and couples and kids and, as the questions are asked at each gathering and celebration, my status as belonging to none of those titles seems to fly above my head like an unwanted banner. I am a single woman in my thirties, with no children and no partner, not working in a high-income job, nor driving a nice car nor owning a home. In the flurry of activity, I can often feel tagged on, an awkward inclusion, an odd-numbered interruption. I can see the disappointment and, sometimes pity, as people gauge where I stand in the social structure. I brace for the well-meaning, “Ah well… maybe next year.”

I often enter the new year and its season of planning and reflection feeling just a little bruised. My status, as I take stock of it all, is far more lowly than I might choose. And yet, it is also far more exalted than I could ever hope or deserve. This is what I want to remember as I move into 2023. As I set resolutions and think about a focus for the year, as I plan new things and evaluate the old, I want to remember what my status really is, what the banner over my life declares.

I am a daughter of the King. Beloved of God. A child of grace.

So are you.

Sometimes, I encounter those words and they feel meaningless. Light and fluffy, pink vapour in the wind compared to the banners the world bestows on me. ‘Alone’ can feel far more real than ‘Beloved’, yet the reverse is true. These are fighting words. Gritty words. Unafraid to get down into the muck and the mess words. Transforming and redeeming words. To remember that I am God’s treasured possession, called by name, known and loved, is to turn the world upside down and inside out.

I fell out of a kayak into the ocean recently. I’m ok, and it was actually quite funny, but there was a moment when I was disoriented and underwater. The waves swept over me, tossed me about and turned me around, relentless and unyielding. I was powerless in the face of them.

I can no more slow the turning of the tides nor stop the waves as they rush to kiss the sandy shore than I can remove the banner of God’s ‘never-stopping, never-giving up love’ over me. God’s love for me, for you, is like those waves in the way that it engulfs and overwhelms, and it is also secure and unshakeable. I breathed deep the air when I came up from under those real water waves, and in the same way, I want, this year, to drink in His mercy and grace, letting it fill my lungs and nourish me to the core. Because that is what He delights to do for His beloved.

This week, I stumbled across a quote from Fredrick Buechner in his book, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation. “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and the hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

So then, hello 2023. Welcome. I will begin with my head held high, crowned with the weight of glory of being a daughter of God. Clothed in His love and grace. A status surer than the ground beneath my feet. I will look with open eyes for the wonder and the beauty and the holiness of Him. And when my status before the world causes me to falter, I will remember that I am but dust, and yet I am His and He is mine. And all is grace.

Do you ever struggle with how the world measures your status and worth, versus what God declares it to be? How do you respond in those moments?