Remembering Grace

One of the greatest parts of life is being faced with what seems to be an insurmountable challenge and then through grace and sheer heart pounding, sweat breaking determination what once seemed impossible resides only as a gleeful memory of triumph. God’s sense of humor and timing of trials tends to bring forth an inner laughter in my laugh. It must be the same type laughter that Sarah let loose as an angel told her she would finally become a mother at ninety; I’m not quite sure but it just seems so similar. My papers are finished for this fall semester and as always it was but by the grace of God, which is quite frankly the underlying theme of my entire life and existence. So like usual I had planned to write my papers at the end of the semester and by the end of Thanksgiving break I was well on my way to a little chip shot up to the green and putt to make par without breaking a sweat; haha right. So during my break I had written a little over eighteen of the twenty pages that were due the following Wednesday, with only five pages of content to go on an exegetical due Tuesday, and then a super easy 5 page church evangelism strategy deal due Thursday; piece of cake. Well Monday morning I found myself sitting in class on time for once and had an urge from within to back up all the work I had done on break to my jump drive. So I dug through my bag, but just could not find the drive, so I decided I’d do it later… Well, go figure the urge was God giving a bit of warning as usual because less than an hour later I felt my hear sink as my computer gave up the ghost. On the outside I believe I was somewhat calm, but inside I felt as if I had just stepped out of an airplane at ten thousand feet with a defective parachute. Apparently, the once easy chip shot was now to be made in a raging hurricane and then only if I could borrow someone else’s wedge. One would think having an expensive computer die unexpectedly would more or less suck, but no, oh no I wasn’t worried much about the computer at all really, I’m they are replaceable, but the hours, upon hours invested in eighteen pages of one the hardest assignments I’ve ever had, that was to say the least, a bit frightening. But even through all this, I knew my God is bigger than any of these “little” problems so I Pressed on getting what needed to be done, done. For some reason every thing that so worried me about the situation seemed to dim and have little phasing effect upon me; every time I thought, “how can I get this all done?” God reminded me of all He had done before:

"Alex, remember how I took care of tuition? Alex, remember how I took care of your car? Alex, remember how I gave you a place to live? Alex, remember and have faith I Am bigger than anything you will ever face; I will get you through."

By Tuesday I had finished the exegetical and went to a computer repair shop to see if maybe, just maybe, my computers hard drive might possibly still have those papers I really did not want to or have time to rewrite. The time at the store seemed like an eternity and a half as the computer lady attempted to access the needed information. Time and again it just did not work; I think it’s been quite a while since I’ve prayed as hard as I did that day. Finally she found that my hard drive worked! And by God’s wonderful and continuous grace my papers were recovered. I’m not quite sure if anyone has ever felt so blessed after their computer has broken. God I remember; help me never to forget and let me always live in Your grace...