Mining Grace

This week–especially Monday–has been filled with unexpected trials, most of which relate to the health of my children.

Monday was my first day back in the office following the T4G conference last week.  I was planning on spending most of the day digging out of whatever had piled up in my absence.  God, however, had different plans.

• The cough my 10 month had developed the previous night got drastically worse in a matter of hours
• My 3-year-old dropped a metal grate on his shin splitting it open
• My wife emailed me at work with a picture of said gashed shin–which I am not posting for the sake of anyone with a weak stomach–to get my counsel on appropriate treatment
• We concluded it warranted a trip to the doctor’s office
• I ran home to be with the other two children while my wife took the ill and injured to triage
• The doctor concluded that the cut required two stitches and the cough required three days of nebulizer treatments

This, of course, required the entire family to make drastic changes to our normal Monday schedule not to mention our normal weekly schedule.  For the sake of time I’m going to leave out my 3-year-old’s roll through a fire ant mound on Tuesday.

When things calmed down Monday afternoon I started to sense in my soul a nagging sense of frustration.  “Hmmm”, I thought, “where is this coming from?”  It certainly wasn’t from my poor suffering children.  It certainly wasn’t from my incredibly caring and equally harried wife.

In an “ah-ha” and “uh-oh” moment I realized that my frustration was with God.

Monday was supposed to be the day that I caught up on work in a blaze of unparalleled productivity.  Monday was supposed to be the day that family life was business as usual.  And then I finally came to the bottom of my soul probing with this root thought, “I don’t deserve a Monday like this.  I deserve better.”

Then, freeing me from my self-pity and self-loathing, the Holy Spirit was pleased to impress upon me the truth of the gospel.  I didn’t deserve a Monday like that.

I deserved worse.

What I deserved was the just wrath and curse of God.  What I deserved was a life of sin and misery followed by eternal death.  What I did not deserve is salvation through the atoning death of Christ.  What I did not deserve is the promise of eternal life.  What I did not deserve was the abiding strength of the Holy Spirit.  What I did not deserve was a godly wife and precious children–no matter how injury prone.  What I did not deserve was to have all of my sufferings tailored made for the good of my soul and the glory of God.

In the end, Monday was a day of getting what I didn’t deserve–God’s sovereign grace.