Invisible Grace

It would seem I'm a student in the school of all things grace these days.  And yet again today, I had a pop quiz visited on me.  My recent car purchase has proven to be a month long disappointment after a total break down on the side of the road after just five days of ownership.  My mechanic went AWOL on vacation, courtesy of my money just spent futile and I was left holding no money or car keys.  I began to get anxious and fretful and just downright righteously angry when he wouldn't answer or return my calls to find out just what in the whole wide world was going on with this "new" car he was supposed to be fixing.  This wouldn't be happening if I had a man to go after him, I fumed.

I've woken up the past three mornings, way before the alarm announced the dawn, pacing over what to do, what to do.  Father?  What am I missing?  I need a car.  Where ARE You??  And so today, I gathered up bravery more than I felt and called the mechanic one more time, and miraculously, he answered this time. The holes in his defense stood out clear to me and I knew I had a "case".  So.  I breathed in and asked for my money back and named the time frame, with the consequences planned out if it wasn't met.  I sat down wondering why any of this.

There's a book on my table, just unwrapped from it's packaging in this afternoon's mail.  I pick it up restless and begin to read the introduction.  A Grace Revealed is the story of a man who, twenty years ago, suffered the sudden loss of his wife, mother and young daughter in one accident, an accident that he survived.  "In the months and years following the accident, I realized that the tragedy itself, however catastrophic, could actually play a less significant role than what God could do with it and how I responded to it.....that redemption happens through God's involvement in the ordinary circumstances of life, no matter what those circumstances happen to be."  That whispered loud in my soul and I sat the book down, picked up my coffee cup and went outside to walk in my thinking spot in my back yard.

Could it be, this man's tragedy, was calling out to teach me something in this small uncertainty?  That, a malfunctioning car was protection, was invisible grace, for unseen things ahead?  Why couldn't God just give me the "right" car the first time?  I'm unable to reason the answer to that.  I do know, though, that this week has seen that kind of thing happen a few times over and each time a layer of trust; trust that breaks down another boundary of condition, starts to set itself firm in my heart.

I'd already pounded out the words hard on my keyboard and posted them to my Facebook to rally other indignant supporters for my cause.  But this?  This stirred me.  Father?  This You can handle.  This You can use to come to my defense in ways that cause me to know Who my Defense is.  So I deleted my words and sat quiet.

Invisible grace tastes sweet when it is revealed grace.