Tag Archives: mission field

from disgrace into grace

rebuilding-the-wallFive women sitting in a living room, taking turns reading from Nehemiah. We are studying that book because in the rebuilding of a wall God can speak much about rebuilding lives. And in that second chapter, starting right there in that 17th verse, something speaks to me.

‘Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”’

Disgrace. (It rhymes with shame.)

Nehemiah saw his broken city with broken walls, and women see their broken lives in much the same way. And in the time it took to inhale that 17th verse something grabbed hold and won’t let go.

The only way out of disgrace is to step into grace.

And I find myself stepping in, in more ways than one. As I sat on that couch in that circle of women, I had no idea that God was searching something out in me. Something that caught my heart by a painful surprise.

Later that night something was said that pulled a trigger and a dam broke open and disgrace spilled out, and I learned that scar tissue won’t hold a wall together because grace is the mortar of God’s rebuilding.

running awayI discovered, as I tried to stop the flow of pain and tears and years of pent-up shame, that the city walls begin to fall into ruin when a little girl is held to a secret as hands go where hands aren’t supposed to go. Shame makes a little girl feel alone and somehow ‘wrong’, and in her attempts to feel ‘right’ again she runs as hard as she can away from her pain, only to discover she has just been running with her pain. Until one day she falls in a heap. Disgraced.

at the cross

But God. He knew where she would fall and He made sure it was at the feet of Grace.

(Because sometimes the only way out of disgrace is to fall into Grace.)

For days now God has been pulling away scar tissue and putting grace in its place. And for once, I understand His timing. Because the women who are studying Nehemiah are the staff at Grace House. And this is where God has me now, about to step into full-time ministry to women with broken walls. To cities in ruin. And I needed to know that God doesn’t rebuild with scar tissue, but with grace.

the walk

The trees. The houses. The concrete beneath my feet. It’s a far different landscape than the one Jesus knew when He walked this earth.  This was my random thought on a recent walk through my neighborhood. Or maybe not so random at all. Because Jesus answered my thought, turning my walk into His classroom.

The landscape is different, but He wasn’t here for the landscape. He came for people, and they have never changed. Suddenly, I found my eyes straining to see what He sees as I walked.

Perhaps living on my street is a woman caught in her sin, struggling under the weight of her guilt and shame. My ears hear songbirds and rustling leaves in the breeze…but my heart hears a voice.

“Who will go to her? Who will tell her that God doesn’t carry a rock?”

Maybe in that blue house with the white shutters is a weary mother who weeps every day for the son who has walked away from God. Perhaps her own faith is growing weak as she loses hope that he will ever return from his self-destructive ways.

“Who will go to her with comfort? Who will cry out to the Father with her, and believe with her for the return of a prodigal?”

On the street behind me is a house that a wife and mother used to live in a number of years ago. Then she committed suicide, leaving a husband and two sons to cope with the devastation. A few doors down from there is a family who lost their son to a drunk driver a few years back. It was the second child they’d lost. Several families on my block have suffered a loss of income and are struggling to hold onto their place in the neighborhood. On another street nearby is a woman with two little boys. Her husband died about 5 years ago.  Now she has a boyfriend, and we can hear the yelling late at night. Sometimes the police come, and the boyfriend leaves. A few days later he’s back, and so is the yelling.

As I look at the houses that I pass every day, I get a momentary glimpse through the eyes of Jesus at the mission field I live in.

In 2007 I heard Him ask, “who will go for Me?”. I raised my hand and went to Africa. And then I went to India.  I have yet to go next door.

And then I went for a walk through a mission field outside my front door.