I swam late last evening with a buddy for the first time. Not Teresa. She’s not a buddy. It was dark but I could see by the light I had installed on the eave of the back porch when we moved here.
When I was five or six I had an imaginary friend named Bart. I guess if you have two older sisters and the kids across the street were girls, you do what you have to do. His name was Bart. The buddy in the pool I have named Bart. However, Bart is far from imaginary. My niece, Jessica, had contacted Teresa about coming over last evening after work to see us. We thought something might be up. It’s not like they call and come over very often. She and Greg and their kids came into the house for a few minutes and then asked us to come to their SUV. They opened the back hatch and handed me a pool vacuum. When we had our family over a few weeks ago Greg realized that I still vacuumed the pool manually. I’m not sure how it all came down, but her brothers, Marc and Todd, and her parents, Jan and Grady, got together with Jessica and Greg and purchased the vacuum. Not just any pool vacuum, but a Cadillac vac. I was more than stunned. If you’ve been reading the last few blogs, then you know that God has had me in a crucible, testing my willingness to respond to gifts of love with gratitude. This pushed the limit. What an amazingly practical gift of love. As I swam last night, watching Bart the vac crisscrossing the pool, I had two things that kept running through my mind. The obvious one was the love I felt. That seems to be a recurring theme these days as the transplant looms closer. How could a niece and two nephews and their families love me this much to sacrificially give to help me in such a practical way? A sister I might understand. They loved me more than I loved myself. Cheap Chuck would have kept hooking up the vacuum hose to the pool pump as he has done the four years we have lived here. God has been revealing His truth to me in this chapter of uncertainty. I thought that as the chemotherapy treatments winded down that there would be a period when life would be a bit more docile and there wouldn’t be a moving of God in my heart—until the transplant was at hand. That has been far from reality. As I swam God began to speak in His tender whisper, helping me see even deeper truth in learning to be a gracious receiver. One word kept coming to my mind. The word grace. Grace has been hard for me to comprehend most of my life. I am a pastor and I know the pat answers. G-R-A-C-E. God’s riches at Christ’s expense. The unmerited favor of God. I know that mercy is not getting what we deserve in terms of punishment and grace is what we receive that we don’t deserve. I struggle with understanding grace because I feel that I must earn God’s love. I’ve been connected to a business all my life that is based on earnings. I studied to earn the grades when I was in school. Here is the truth God taught me last evening and this morning about grace. God offers us grace because God’s nature is love. His nature is not grace. His nature is love. God is love. Because He loves He shows us grace. That truth came to light as I pondered the sacrificial gift of my family. It was out of love that grace was offered to me through a gift that I didn’t earn nor deserve but needed. Because God is love He sent His One and Only Son into this world as a gift. God so loved that He gave. Jesus died for our sins and the Father offers us His grace. We don’t deserve the grace we are offered, but it is a grace that we desperately need. God wasn’t quite finished. Two more very specific insights about grace. Grace can be refused. I could have said, “There’s no way I can accept that gift. Take it back.” What would have happened to the relationship I have with my family had I done that? God’s gift of grace can be refused, too. Here’s the really good insight, at least to me. The offer of grace and the acceptance of grace deepens the love relationship. There is a deeper love that I can’t explain for Jessica and Greg and for Marc and Lisa, Todd and Anna, and Jan and Grady. As I talked with Greg standing by the pool, watching the yet-named Bart the vac do his thing, there was a love for Greg that was deeper than I had before. I can’t explain it. Grace offered and grace accepted deepens love. That’s what happens when we accept God’s love through the grace He offers. The love relationship deepens. We may not be able to explain it either, but we can know a deeper love with Jesus than we have had before. As moving as Bart the vac was, there was something else that happened last evening from the hand and heart of nine-year-old Carly. She gave me a handwritten note. The note said, “Just remember: You are braver than you think, stronger than you seem, and loved more than you know.” More loved than I could know is being revealed in so many concrete ways. I just hope that Carly is right on the first two. The jury will give the verdict in the next couple of months whether she is correct. As valuable as Bart the vac is monetarily, I have a feeling that there will come a day when he quits working in a few years. I also have a feeling that long after that, should I still be alive in this world, that I will continue to have a handwritten note from a nine-year-old whom I love. Its value is immeasurable.
1 Comment
Debynie
8/6/2023 08:35:51 am
What a wonderful revelation in the midst of hard times…seeing Gods immense 💕 love. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
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Chuck Cooper
Pastor at Daybreak Community Church Archives
February 2025
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