Grace and Remembrance
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ,
after you have suffered a little while,
will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.
1 Peter 5:10
It is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s passing. I still miss her—every single day. A month after her memorial my husband and I travelled to Hawaii and stayed with friends on Kauai. We celebrated Thanksgiving on the beach, surfboards as our table. I took my chair down to the water and set it up so the waves would crash against my legs, and I thought of the washing of God—his grace washing the pains of grief and loss—waters of life flushing through me as the waves came rushing in. So many emotions ran through me that afternoon. Memories, some good, some bad, some painful and some joyful. I let the tears flow freely.
I sat in the water that day and let the grace of God flow; but what if I stood and just jumped in, letting myself be swept over by his infinite sea of love and forgiveness. Yes, we can stand on the shore and just admire God from a distance—but in it we are swept and tumbled, and maybe upside down for a bit. Maybe even your breath is caught—things lost—the losing of yourself. But everything—everything becomes washed, rinsed in the blood of Christ. I thought that day of everything I tend to hang onto and what must be let go of.
The infinite love of God can be capsizing, the ocean your own tears. Tenderly my husband and our friends, would come and check on me, asking if everything was okay. I found myself telling them, “It’s OK. Really I was fine.” But not really, because in that moment of lose I was broken and didn’t know which way was up. I was tumbled in an ocean of sorrow.
What I know from that time in my life and the continuing days since is that the mercy of God upends you and you come home humbled, grateful, born again into the deep love of God.
O LORD, thank you for washing, rinsing, gracing, and loving your people through the storms of life. May we not just stand on the shore of your mercy and admire you, but jump right into the depths of your love. In Christ, Amen.
Diane Scott
