mother's day making

My schedule is finally starting to ease up (happy sigh :) While I haven't been creating much art, I have been making...

A little peek at the wrap on our Mother's Day gifts...

It really didn't take much time and hopefully says to the recipients how much they are loved.

grace

On reading Ann's words this morning, I knew I had to share...

image via

My daughter and her friends were talking recently about a young man they heard of who sits in his black clothes and black hair and stares from the street corner at passersby. How many times he must get passed by in a day, left alone and looked away from? What devastation or torment reduced him to this? Her heart was broken for him and all who are like him; she knew it could well be her in that place on the corner but for the Grace of a Savior Who pulled her back to her feet. Honestly, it could be me, too. Without Grace, aren't we all just a diagnosis, divorce, job loss or secret shame away from brokenness that brings us to our knees?

These hard things happen to all of us, they bruise and twist and mangle and bleed a soul. It is Grace that comes and wraps Love around wounds to let healing begin. Grace places us in a community that circles the arms so we can feel His Love. We didn't do anything to earn that Grace or these friends that support and we don't even deserve our meager faith. And my faith is meager if I see a broken, bleeding soul and judge instead of being Samaritan Love to the broken on the side of the road. How can I say I walk in the Light when I walk right on past the broken, eyes averted, secretly judging their circumstances and appearance? How can I claim to be a Grace-follower when I am really a deserter? Jesus hasn't rejected him - I have.

I delude myself and make Him out to be false and a liar when I can not or will not see beyond the broken and past the ugly to see the beauty in a soul – a soul He is drawing to Himself. Can I claim to see with His eyes when I look away and pass quickly by? Or will I be the Samaritan, full of His compassion and mercy for the undeserving and sin-covered remembering I am undeserving and sin-covered, too? 

His grace to me is wildly abundant and so I count (gifts 1753 - 1761) . . .

how He turns my darkness into light...grace that saves...His love that pours through family and friends...grace that heals and transforms a heart for His children...lessons from my daughter...prayer that brings us into His Presence...the knowledge of "but for the grace of God, there goes I"...remembering I am the wretch saved by His amazing grace...humbled