Ending with Grace

The gymnast springs from the mat to the impossible bars above. Her willowy form flips in an artful spiral through the air. Gasps rise from the arena as the routine mounts toward her final moment. She whirls from the heights and unfolds her legs. The entire performance depends on the ending impact. Her heels stick the landing with grace. A roar of applause echoes around her.

I’ve long admired the grace of gymnasts. I bear all the clumsiness of a Lucille Ball character, without the intentionality. Just this week, I bumped my head emptying the dishwasher and busted my thumb vacuuming. Someone asked if I planned to go ice skating this winter. I tried not to snort while guffawing in response to that one. Good thing my parents had second thoughts about giving me the middle name, Grace. The irony would’ve been overwhelming to bear for a lifetime.

If anyone needs grace, I do. I wish it were only a matter of poor coordination, but I’ve demonstrated clumsiness of the soul as well. No matter how much I’d like to hide my scrapes, I have stumbled over my selfishness and pride plenty of times this year. Worries tripped me. I tangled a knot of criticism into my hair a couple of times. Annoyance choked me with more intensity than the infinity scarf which took half a day to figure out.

What a mess of snot and frizz I’d be if I tried to stick a graceful landing! Or, as the apostle Paul put it, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

Thank God I don’t have to depend on a flawless performance for a perfect outcome. I vault into my life’s path with the intent of obeying God’s will. One moment, my spirit soars in beautiful alignment with His. Then my focus wobbles. Christ offers me the grace I lack. He draws my mind and heart back into synch with His. With each day’s prayers of heartfelt repentance, I seek His grace. Awkward girl that I am, God knows I need it often. And Jesus promises I can count on it for a beautiful ending. Thankfully, He’s always willing to correct my straying flip and make that impossible landing happen with His perfect grace.

As we approach the end of one year and peek into the next year’s performance, will you share my confidence in His sufficient grace? Let’s look forward to ending and starting anew with the perfect outcomes of Christ in center focus. The applause of a “great cloud of witnesses” will fill the kingdom as we stick that heavenly landing.

May the redeeming power of our Savior bless your New Year’s celebrations and all of 2015.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24).

“because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,  in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace . . . For it is by grace you have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:4-10).

 ^“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. . . . What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:15-25).

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:1).