The Promise & The Law

God gave us a promise before He gave us a law.

For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. // Galatians 3.18, NIV

A rule-follower, until Jesus changed me, and the thing most goody-two-shoes won't tell you is that the rules aren't followed for fun, but out of fear. The fear of losing, something or someone, if you break the rules so you follow all of them without question, you know, to be safe.

Wrapped up in a false security since rule-abiding is a guarantee that nothing bad will happen until eventually you've wrapped yourself up so tight you can't breathe.

Because rules weren't meant to be broken but everyone, and I mean everyone, breaks one eventually and we wait for the other shoe to drop and expect something to be taken away.

God, though, gave us a promise first, because it's in the promise that the first steps are taken toward freedom, not the rules. Not the law.

This is the God I worship.The one who showed me that rules may not be meant for breaking but they certainly aren't meant for suffocating; and all that false security fell away when I realized my relationship with Christ began with a promise.

Not a set of standards.

It is His standards that show me I need Him.
But it is His promise that binds me to Him.

In His grace, indeed.  

Grace for Women

What does grace look like, on a woman?

Some may say the same as a man. I don't know this to be true, for certain. 

I know we're all the same in our broken humanity, but maybe the shattered bits of the feminine soul look different than the shattered bits of a masculine one. 

Both genders are broken by sin, but can the same weapon create different wounds? 

And when grace heals these shattered soul-bits, and brings wholeness to those wounds, might this look different too? 

I think so. 

It never will be clear and cut and dry: the dance between masculine & feminine and the history of pain and power that each gender carries; and you can rest assured that women have had their power as well as pain, and men have had their pain as well as power. 

But my heart, what she wants to know is what grace looks like on a woman. 

Grace, it's realizing there's a way out of our mess, a way that Someone Else already has completely figured out.

And she doesn't have to think through details and clean up last-minute messes and hold her breath and weary-wish that nothing goes wrong.

A way that not only allows her to give up control, but requires it.   

So what does it look like, for a woman to know that?

To know that she wears a white-righteous robe that doesn't come with binding numbers because grace doesn't reduce your identity to a waste size. And you wouldn't believe the accessories that come with this one: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, & self-control.

To know that what is passed down from generation to generation can dictate the color of her eyes & the shape of her nose, but her emotions and mind and heart are all her own and that spiritual genes always trump physical ones.

To know that this grace was a gift from a Man, and that Man sees the robe and the redeemed emotions, mind & heart and He sees soul-beauty. And His gaze and His arms and His hands and His words are all safe...

Wisdom, she dances through Proverbs, and I wonder if she could be the "after" picture of a woman made-over and worked-over by grace.

I wonder much, but I know this: Grace... Grace looks good on a woman.