BROKEN JAR:

BROKEN JAR:
365 DAYS ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

A FRESH LOOK BACKWARDS


“Get skillful and godly Wisdom, get understanding (discernment, comprehension, and interpretation)…” Proverbs 4:5 (The Amplified Bible) 

In the process of writing Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights, a frivolous, insignificant story based on just one year of my life as a child, I learned a great deal.  God imparted to me some of this understanding, discernment, comprehension, and interpretation that Solomon harps on over and over in Proverbs. 

Specifically, I learned to discern and interpret an awful lot about mercy and grace.  I’ve been taught all my life that mercy is not receiving the punishment we deserve, and grace is receiving the reward we don’t deserve.  I learned — by way of closely relooking at some old memories— that I have been and still am the recipient of both mercy and grace in huge ways, both quantitatively and qualitatively.  As a result, I have learned how important it is for me to give mercy and grace to others in my path who need them.

Maybe you need, as I did, to cast out some long-held childish notions about your parents—maybe still alive, maybe already dead; it matters not; it’s still important— and extend to them some mercy and grace.
I pray for you, as you journey back, that God will highlight for you new ways to see old events that will help you shatter some preconceived notions and let go of some long-held wrong conclusions that might have been disturbing your peace.

C.S. Lewis said, “We will never meet a mere mortal.”  This means that everyone we have ever spoken to, argued with, cherished, or despised, is an eternal soul with one of only two very different destinies.  Young, irritating, exasperating, out-of-control punks are headed somewhere forever.  There is an all-seeing, all-knowing Great Listener and Great Whisperer who keeps tossing out his trusty lariat in various ways and through sundry characters.  I think He’s hoping we will allow Him to deliver us out of our frightful tendency to bounce off one destructive fence into another one just as disastrous into His chute of safety and peace, a sound mind, and a good future. 
       


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