Rediscovering Grace Through A Two By Four Moment – Guest Post By Chad Jones
Today, Chad Jones is the Stretched guest blogger. Chad and I became friends relatively recently thanks to the wonders of the blog world. Like me, Chad is a husband and a dad trying to figure out how to live life honoring God and his family. His blog, Randomly Chad, is where he expresses the randomness of his life, but I think there’s actually a non-random point to what Chad writes. Stop by his blog and check out his other writing. Also, add Randomly Chad to your regular blog reading.
(If you have a STRETCHED story, I’d love to share it here. Drop me a line if you’re interested in guest posting here.)
In many ways, I’m a great fan of the status quo. I’m happiest when things are copacetically homogenous. Or something like.
Yet over and against this is the old saw that “change is the only constant.” This is undoubtedly true. And for the Christian doubly so, because–as others have so eloquently said–“there’s no standing still in Christ.”
Yet, as a generally introverted person, a man of a certain age, with a wife, two children, and a demanding career, it’s nice when things stay the same for a season (or two, or three). However, over and against this attitude is a God who, through Jesus his son, loves me enough to not leave me as I am.
He’s frustratingly meddlesome at times, usually confronting most in those areas where I think things are just fine and dandy, thank-you very much.
This past year, he has challenged–has stretched–me the most in areas regarding:
My marriage
My humor
My blog
My parenting
My pride
Are you catching the common theme there: I, me, mine?
As much as I learned from that season, I’ve in no sense “arrived”–I’m still learning to be teachable. And learning that being teachable requires ever-increasing humility. (Which usually begins with those words the Fonz found so difficult to say: “I was wr… wro… I. Was. Wrong”). “For God abases the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
And grace is what I–you, we–need very much.