Grace on Parade

Spreading the fragrance of God's grace everywhere

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Grace Beyond Law

Public school building
Does grace exist in public schools?

My public school education straddled the year of 1972 when Congress passed PL 194-42, mandating the public education of the handicapped. As a visually impaired person who  experienced education before and after school teachers were told everyone deserves education no matter what their physical or mental capabilities, I’ve often remarked that you can’t legislate attitude.Now, as a visually impaired parent of a visually impaired child and as one who has sat through the insufferable minutia of IEP’s, I’ve appreciated the times schools went beyond doing what the law said we deserved and gave us what we needed.

Grace Is Alive In the Public School System

The small elementary school in rural southern Kansas was like that. Knowing I couldn’t drive, the school offered to have the special needs bus swing by our home on cold mornings. I have difficulty seeing print on darker colored paper, so the school secretary took the extra step of printing school announcements on white paper for me.

Handicapped accesability
A simple line of paint was an act of grace.

The ultimate act of goodness came the day the principal heard that my daughter tripped and fell on the two uneven steps leading out of the school because she couldn’t see them. He arranged for the maintennce crew to paint a yellow stripe on the edge of the two steps. It was a simple gesture, one that didn’t cost the school much money or time, but they weren’t required to do it and they did get flack from some parents who didn’t like the looks of the yellow stripes. In the mind of the principal however, Christine needed it and that was what mattered more than anything else.

 

It’s ironic that the school that year had a “Caught Being Good” character development program. Every time a child did a kind, repsonsible or honest act, the school tacked a small PrintShop certificate to the hallway wall, recognizing that the child had been ‘caught being good.”  Our family printed out a similar certificate to give to Mr. Stewart.  In our estimation, he modeled to the staff and student body what “caught being good” was all about.

 

God is not dead in the public schools. He still works through the goodness and kindness of folks who care about meeting needs of children and parents alike.

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Grace Wrapped in Tin Foil

The day of Pat’s funeral was one of the hardest days of ministry my husband and I ever faced. For two years, we invested our lives and emotions into helping Pat overcome her alcohol addiction, but it was too little too late. After the funeral, her estranged daughter asked if she could come to our home that evening for counseling before her plane left the next day. I hurried home to get ready for our oldest daughter’s eighth birthday party, only to intercept a phone call from a disgruntled woman who felt we had not done enough to help Pat.

By late afternoon, I was physically and emotionally drained. I wondered what I could feed our coming guest for dinner but my clogged brain couldn’t even remember what I had in the refrigerator.

The doorbell rang. “Lord I can’t deal with one more person, I just can’t,” I prayed. I was tempted to ignore it. My body went into auto-pilot mode and I opened the door.

In His mercy, God took care of my need.

gift of bbq chicken
Doug’s gift to us.

Doug stood outside the screen door, holding something shiny in his hands. A former biker and hard drinking truck driver, Doug was a brand new believer. We didn’tsee much of Doug and his wife outside of Sunday morning services, so Doug had no clue of what was happening in our lives that day.

“What’s that?” I asked. I sounded grouchy, blunt, terse, dull. But I didn’t care. I was too tired to even pretend to be gracious, too weary to figure out anything on my own.

Doug, whose dry sense of humor is a finely honed art skill, answered with the obvious. “A plate covered with tin foil.” A Brittish comedian could not have done better.  I accepted the plate, peeking under the foil. The plate was full of fresh grilled barbecued chicken. “Dinner!” I breathed. “Thank you!” He shrugged. “I got in a grilling mood and sort of cooked too much,” he explained, ending with a sheepish laugh.

I closed the door, promising myself I would tell Doug later how God used an abundance of barbecued chicken to meet our desperate need. For years afterwards, our families exchanged plates covered in tin foil to commemorate how God, in His loving mercy, nudges others to help us in time of trouble.

 

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Grace On The Road

outreach to senior citizens
Even though senior citizens might have to move into care facilities, they are still part of your church family.

If people won’t – or can’t – come to church, then we need to be the church and go to them. That’s what the women of my church at Roseville Christian Church did when they moved their monthly meeting to a retirement center in a town eighteen miles south of Roseville so three former church members living at the center could enjoy the fellowship of their friends and neighbors.

Our hostess, Mary Lou, reserved a private dining room and provided all the food and drinks for the meal. The rest of us met at the church to carpool. We probably did more talking by traveling in the cars together than if we had stayed at the church for a “normal” meeting.

After the meal, Mary Lou directed our conversation by asking us “Where were you born?” (only four of us were born outside of Illinois), “What has been your occupation?” and “When and where were you baptized?” As we shared our stories of how God had met us in our need for salvation, one young woman expressed her desire to make Christ Lord of her life. When she said that, our entire group, including our three guests, clapped with delight. One of the older women shared the inner struggle she had recently faced in moving her husband to full term nursing care and that “Now I’m at peace with my decision.” I could tell she needed to share her story with people who knew her family and had walked the journey with her.

Our choice to take our fellowship to the independent care center  provided a new envornment for God to work among His people.  We brought the outside world to them and they flowed into our fellowship as if they had never left.

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What 21 Small Churches Can Do

Remember number stories from grade school math? This number story might drive a math teacher crazy, but it makes sense in the classroom of God’s grace:

1 F5 tornado – 163 lives – 8,000 homes + 1 widow + 2 men + $156,000 divided by 21 Western Illinois communities 400 miles away + over 40 laborers x (y x 800 mile round trips) = 1 beautiful new home + countless changed lives.

I had the privilege of interviewing and writing an article about this amazing story.  It took one widow’s faith plus two men willing to venture into the unseen for God to show what He could do.

How did this happen?

After the May 22, 2011 F5 tornado destroyed her home, Stephanie Dalton told a friend, “Just you wait and see what God is going to do for my family.” One hour later, a representative from the College Heights Christian Church called Stephanie with the news that two men from a small church in rural western Illinois wanted to help her rebuild her home. And they did it! Less than nine months after the tornado leveled a third of the city of Joplin, churches from 21 communities raised the money and provided work crews including a group from the Western Illinois University campus ministry group on their spring break to rebuild Stephanie’s home.

Joplin Tornado Recovery
Roy and Ryan had a big dream. And God made it happen!

As Roy Day and Ryan Johnson supervised the project, they quickly realized this job was more than building a house. Churches and communities came together with a common purpose. Day and Johnson used the technology of Facebook, YouTube and a blog site to keep a fragmented audience connected. Joplin Tornado RecoveryPictures of the progress galvanized contributors and prayer warriors to support the project to the end. As they watched God partner with the project and provide in so many ways, Roy and Ryan’s lives “were changed forever.” Roy, a cement contractor and Ryan, a financial advisor, now want to use their gifts to build other homes for victims of disasters.

If you want to read more about Stephanie, Roy and Ryan, click here to read their story  published in the Christian Standard.

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"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him."
- 2 Corinthians 2:14