Text Editing Grace

Well, I have a flip phone which takes quite a while to write some messages. For those of you who may have forgotten, in order to text the words "said", you have to push the "7" key four times to get the "s", push the "2" key once to get the "a", push the"4" key three times to get the "i", and push the "3" key once to get the "d".

Anyway, it takes some time to write a more involved text. I asked someone to listen to it, so see if it made sense and would not be offensive to someone who was going to read it. (That's the tricky thing about having conversations with people by email or text, because they can read into these messages attitudes, sarcasm, etc. that are non-existent.) Anyway, that's why I asked this person's opinion.

After asking for their opinion, the whole thing went south! It's not that they thought anything could be misconstrued as offensive, but they wanted me to re-write the whole text that had taken me 20 minutes to create in the first place. I was feeling frustrated with their suggestions and the time it would take me to redo the whole text, when I prayed for Christ's Text Editing Grace. Of course, there is no special grace really called this. I have found that when I'm frustrated, I can say a really brief prayer to Christ, who already knows what's going on and pray something like, "Please give me Text Editing Grace, " and He does! It's amazing that Christ will respond to such a brief prayer, but He wants us to turn to Him in all aspects of our lives and there are times when it's not really conducive to saying an elaborate prayer.

After saying the brief prayer, I was led to listen more politely to the person's suggestions of how they thought I should reconstruct the whole text more for style than for the meaning of it. It saved an argument that had been about to leak out of my mouth any second, and it reduced my tension. I thanked the person for their suggestions and then re-read the text I wrote to see if it would be better off if I made any changes. If you would like to read more posts like this, you can find them at Christ's Grace Abounds on: https://christsgraceabounds.blogspot.com

Insert Foot Grace

I recently knew a subject was a potentially problematic one for someone I knew. I knew this, because a comment had already been made about it. I made light of it, because it was far past my comprehension to believe it could cause any problems, so I moved forward with discussing it. Big Mistake!

Not only was the other person not on the same page with me, but my trying to discuss it may have seemed like I was saying the issue was trivial, when it wasn't to the other person. Why did I go ahead and try to discuss it when I already knew it was a hot topic for the other person? 

Sometimes, I can go through things in my head over and over and challenge everything that was said and done, but does it help anything? Usually not! I'm better off to pray and ask Christ for Insert Foot Grace, so that I don't keep analyzing what I should have done instead and just let it be.

Wrong Way Grace

Have you ever been around someone and you can tell they may go the wrong ways, so you warn them? But they still turn the wrong way after you already suggested they go the opposite way.

There have been times in my life where I may have felt justified to say something like, "Why did you turn that way? Didn't you hear me tell you that we need to go the other way?" Although I have to admit I've made a few too many comments like this in my life, they aren't really very productive. Additionally, they make me a poor example of Christ's forgiving grace in my life. Instead, I should say a brief prayer asking for Wrong Way Grace, so that I'm supportive of the person who just made a wrong turn instead of judgmental of them. I wouldn't want Christ judging me over every wrong turn I've made in my life, both literally and figuratively!

News Too Loud Grace

I was trying to watch You Tube videos to insert into one of the other Christian blogs that I felt led to create. My husband said that he wanted to watch the news. We talked about us mutually keeping the volume down on the TV and the computer, so that we both could hear what we were watching.

Well, need I say more? The volume kept being too high for me to hear the videos to see which were the ones I needed to insert into the blog and had to keep reminding him. Then, Christ showed me that I needed to be more accommodating and less frustrated. Although I didn't say a specific brief prayer, I was reluctantly open to the suggestion that Christ had in my mind when He gave me the News Too Loud Grace. I told my husband that I could turn my computer off and do it another time, if my viewing videos was keeping him from listening to the news and he said it was fine. 

That was a very gracious thing for him to say, when he could have said, "Yes, please close out of your computer, because I can't hear the news very well," but he didn't. It gave me a deeper appreciation for my husband and his thoughtfulness, which I don't always focus on as much as I should. 

Dirty Fingerprint Grace

Recently I was cleaning up the accumulation of dirty fingerprints on the doors, cupboards, etc. Normally, this isn't something I look forward to doing, since it's somewhat tedious. This time, Christ had given me Dirty Fingerprint Grace, where instead of being frustrated, I thought about the height of each of the fingerprints I was cleaning and who must have left them there.

I wasn't frustrated in the least and it seemed that I enjoyed cleaning the fingerprints while thinking of my loved ones who had left them. Although I hadn't prayed for this Grace that Christ so freely gave me, I'll need to remember to pray for Dirty Fingerprint Grace in the future to make that household task much more pleasant.

Out of Line Grace

I was in a store that was full to the hilt. People were everywhere! I decided to shop more and wait for the long line to go down, since it's not my favorite thing to wait in long lines.

When it did, I lined up behind another woman. She left the line and started looking at other things. Knowing that I've done things like that before instead of waiting in long lines, I asked the lady if she wanted to be next when the salesperson called me to the counter.

She declined coming back to the line and continued to shop, which really isn't the point of this post. It's that Christ gave me Out of Line Grace, where it didn't bother me when the lady left the line to shop while waiting.