Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

Praise for the Light

Before I was saved I breathed in the air of common grace, grace that is filled with the creation knowledge of Him. It was poison to my lungs. I flopped around like a caught fish on the deck, breathing grace but longing for the murky waters to envelop me once again, the weeds wrapping around my head, because I loved the darkness. (cf Jonah 2:5b)

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:19).

as it is written:

None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
(Romans 3:10)

And yet He loved me, a sinner, and set me upright, washed me, gave me common grace and and added saving grace to my soul.

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.(Romans 8:2).

After salvation I breathe in the sweetness of special grace, the savor of Jesus and His sanctifying work of atonement. The Light came.

Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

It was an ordinary day, and the woman was thirsty

The woman was a harlot. There was a moral code and the woman fell far below it. So far below that she couldn’t even see the underside of it anymore. Jumping from husband to husband, bed to bed, with or without benefit of divorce, man after man. She was a slut. Her sins were monumental, public, known to all, and she was regarded with disgust and hatred. She knew it. She didn’t care. She did care.

She was loathed, and also lonely, marginalized, and excluded. The other women in town didn’t talk to her, so that her taint wouldn’t infect them. There were cliques, all right, and she was definitely not part of any of them. She wasn’t invited to baby showers or to weddings or to sewing circles. She wasn’t even welcome at the well, at dusk when the other women went to draw in the cool of the day. The looks…the turned backs… the whispers. Once, even that fight when they said those nasty things. She never went back.

Continue reading “It was an ordinary day, and the woman was thirsty”