There are bible verses that we hear so often they begin to sound more like a cliché’s then promises that can change how we face everything.
2 Corinthians 12:9 sometimes feels that way to me. It’s the kind of verse that even people who have barely spent anytime in churches can finish if someone starts it for them, “My grace is sufficient for you…”
“…for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
I’ve been thinking about this verse a lot since reading Kara Tippetts' latest book, And it was beautiful.
If you look at my copy you’ll see this underlined:
“Hard is grace too. Don’t imagine yourself in the future, because that is you without the grace provided for that moment. There is peace for this day, find it.”
I don’t know about you but I don’t think of hard as grace very often. I think I paid attention when Kara wrote this because she knew what it was to live hard, to have to draw on God’s strength in her weakness. In 2012, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and in March 2015 she passed away leaving four children and a husband behind.
I kept turning this quote over in my head.
Hard is grace.
There is grace provided for this moment.
Find peace for this day.
There is grace for the hard...
This quote from Kara drove me back to that old, tired verse in the Bible. To keep it fresh, this time I read it in The Voice,
“My grace is enough to cover and sustain you. My power is made perfect in weakness.” So ask me about my thorn, inquire about my weaknesses, and I will gladly go on and on—I would rather stake my claim in these and have the power of the Anointed One at home within me.
As I read this version I realised that this – this knowledge that as we weaken, Christ in us is able to become stronger, to be more visible – was the secret that Kara had to living well, when the life she was living wasn’t the living she expected.
Kara recognized that God would give her all the grace she needed to face the hard things that were coming. That is so easy to write but it must be hard to live but somehow she did, somehow she buried into God’s grace for the moment and found peace for each day.
Later, in the book Kara writes,
"This is my prayer right now – not for fewer days of suffering but for more days of strength”. (tweet this)
That is a brave prayer, that is a reckless prayer, it’s a prayer I’m not sure I’d have the courage to pray.
But maybe it’s the secret, maybe the secret to seeing grace in hard and finding peace for each day is not pray for less suffering but for more of Jesus, for more of his strength, for more God in our weakness.
*****
I was here. I saw beauty. I embraced it.— Kara Tippetts
Kara Tippetts discovered how to find joy in the small moments of life. She learned how to hold tight to hope even while battling intense physical and emotional pain. And she lived out the truth that God can redeem any story.
In her final book, Kara offers gentle reflections on living and dying well. She invites us to cultivate soft hearts even when we face great disappointment. Her ideas for living are hard-won, wrestled with in the crucible of family, illness, and faith. And her constant reminder is that whether we are in the midst of dark days or mundane moments Jesus is always there, life is surprisingly beautiful, and God is forever good.
*****
Disclaimer: I was provided with this book for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links used in this post.
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