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Space for Grace

Posted by on March 13, 2012

In the opening video to her study on James, Beth Moore says that the resurrection means that nothing except for the tomb has to stay empty. Interesting, considering just minutes before I heard her say that, I was sitting at a traffic light, trying to name this crazy pain I am feeling right now. ‘Heartbreak’ didn’t seem to quite do it justice, so I kept searching, and I realized: I feel empty. Even the feeble hopes I’d clung to for the last few months that this person I had spent my everything in loving would wake up and be the man of God I needed him to be – they were gone. Not to mention the big hopes he’d given me in the beginning, when he’d told me he loved me and asked me what kind of honeymoon I wanted. Those were gone, too, although I think it’s safe to say I released most of those some time ago. Everything – gone. My heart – no longer full of anything but pain. I felt empty.

Then she said: these empty places, they make space for grace. That we can allow God to fill our emptiness with grace, with Him, with resurrection power.

I’ve stared at my emptiness before. I’ve poured all manner of things into the chasm. Sometimes I’ve allowed grace to flow in. Sometimes I’ve snapped the lid shut in anger and confusion and numbed myself until I at least couldn’t feel the emptiness quite as much. But now, I have prayed for hope. I need hope to believe that a.) this is only a wound suffered at human hands and my loving Father will never, ever reject me for things He has long since cast into the depths of the sea and b.) my future is still promising, is still carried along by His plans to prosper and not to harm me.

And so, I believe. I take heart. I choose to hope in my Savior’s ability to take this empty place in my chest and fill it with spilling, crazy grace. Already He’s working. Already He’s sending me words of joy, words of comfort, words of affirmation. Already, grace is pouring in.

Already, I feel a bit more whole.

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