Mother’s Day, Family and God’s Grace

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here. Frankly, I’ve been too busy. Things are starting to ease up a bit, so I hope to be writing more soon. For now, please allow me to ramble a bit.

The photo posted here was shot by my son this past Sunday—Mother’s Day. It’s a picture of my wife, Catherine, and myself.

“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all’” (Proverbs 31:28-29).

I don’t mind telling you: I’m a blessed man. Everything I have, including my very life, was given to me. God has graciously given me a wonderful wife, and this summer, the Lord willing, Catherine and I will celebrate 18 years of marriage. God has also graciously blessed us with two boys for whose souls we pray every day. I can’t tell you how it does my soul good to see my oldest, who is 15, in his bedroom at night with his open Bible, with no prompting from me or his mother, reading the word of God. I’m a blessed man, indeed.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: I know I don’t deserve a thing from God—nothing, that is, but His just wrath and condemnation. My family is a testimony to God’s grace, not my goodness. Apart from Christ, I know I’m nothing but a hell-deserving sinner. That’s why, when I look about me and see the beautiful family that God has given, the house that he has given us for shelter, and recognize that our home is one in which the name of the Lord is spoken of with reverence and in which the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is heard—my heart is filled with praise and thanksgiving, and my eyes overflow with tears of gratitude.

My life didn’t have to turn out this way; God has been good to me, and I thank Him.

When I’m tempted to pride (which is every day), it is the remembrance of my sins, and the awareness of my own wretchedness apart from Christ, that helps to keep me in my place. I’m an inherently flawed man who desperately needs Jesus.

And you need Him, too!

“Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Apart from the grace of God, we’re doomed to eternal condemnation and misery. Do you realize that you need Jesus? Are you trusting and relying upon His blood and righteousness alone? In Christ, there is no condemnation, there is life abundant, and there is “grace upon grace” (John 1:16).