“Out of His fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.” John 1:16

While considering a devotional session I was about to lead, I decided to look up the word “grace” in the Merriam Webster Dictionary. I tend to think a lot of “coincidences”.I trust that God orders things to answer our questions, to give us insight, and to inspire us. What some might call a slip of the finger, a typo, I call the answer to my prayer, “Lord, what do you want me to share with Your loved ones?”

In an attempt to type the word “grace”, I typed “grave”. At first, I nearly deleted the letters to once again try for my desired word, but ‘something’ stopped me, and I read the definition.“Grave is an excavation for burial of a body: a burial place or likely to produce great harm or danger.” Then I typed ‘grace’ and read the definition. “Grace is unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification.”I sat quietly pondering the juxtaposition of these two words and how this ‘just so happened by accident.’ See, the difference of these two words echoes a choice within all of us.

We all have something hard, something scary, something taxing, something monolithic to face. The question is how will we react when we face hard times. Will we decide this trial is too difficult; this is where I stop. Metaphorically, this is my burial place. God won’t leave us to fend for ourselves, but He will expect us to trust and walk with Him.We can’t let trials have the final say. We can’t make our beds in the burial place because God has much to do with us still.God desires for us to turn to Him and to trust Him to bless us from His limitless resources. His grace is enough to carry us through any difficulty. Do we trust Him to make good on His word? Do we really trust Him to deliver us from captivity? Do we trust Him to go before us and guard us from behind? Do we believe He will rain down manna and unleash water from a rock? Because He has done it before, and He will do it again and again.

I hope that we do trust Him. I hope that we can be a people found faithful of our holy, loving God. I hope that we can glorify Him by letting Him move on our behalf and telling the world about it. We can’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we react to those things.

William Bradford recounted in “Of Plymouth Plantation ” how an early Pilgrim, John Howland- a passenger of the Mayflower, was thrown from the ship, but he caught hold of a rope and held to it tightly as he sank into the sea. Because of his tight hold, he was rescued, brought back onboard, and nursed back to health. Howland went on to live a healthy life in the New World. He contributed much to the new country and church. If we could all hold as tightly to God during our trials as Howland did to the ship’s rope, God delights in bestowing grace upon grace. We can also go on to make positive impacts on our community because we held on to God and were saved from our troubles.

Let us not forget that we serve the same God who turned bones into an army, parted a sea, stopped the sun from setting. He took a rejected brother and turned him into the second-in-command of Egypt, took the stuttering man and made him into the deliverer of Israel. He made a shepherd into a king. Our problems are no match for our mighty God. He will go before and guard behind. He will part the sea and drown the pursuers. He’s the only One who can. He’s the only one who wants to.He’s the only one who will.

The next time you face something that looks too big and too insurmountable, remind yourself you have a choice in how you react. Remember, “I can either make this my burial ground or my place of divine assistance.”

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.” Ephesians 3:20