At the end of yesterday’s post, I said my next one would have a living, breathing example of grace shown to me over the weekend. I’m going to try to share that with you here.

During Christmas break (Christmas Eve day I think) I received a text from a young lady asking about a wedding in May. I knew I already had one scheduled for her desired weekend, so I suggested another weekend. Long story short: she was having trouble finding an open date at the venue she wanted.

Meanwhile, her fiance’ had talked to me months ago about wanting to be baptized so we decided to talk between services on Sunday, the 28th, about setting up an appointment to talk. We did…Saturday, January 3rd at 10:00.

Around Thursday, word was spreading about the possibility of nasty weather hitting early this week. Jo was planning on taking our grandson to Ohio after first service Sunday and return tomorrow (Tuesday). But I proposed we take him back Friday, stay the night and return Saturday. About 10:10 I received a text from Whitley saying they were almost there. OH NOOOOOO! I was on I-70 just west of Dayton, OH.

Strike 1

No way that was going to happen. So I called her and set up a 2:00 appointment. We started meeting and went through all the wedding talk when I got a text from a lady at the “Y” who attends OVCF: “There is a family here waiting for a baptism.” Say what? That is when Whitley kindly tells me the reason we met was not necessarily to talk about the wedding but the baptism.

Strike 2

So I switched gears, spent about 45 minutes talking salvation & baptism; led him in praying for salvation/her for recommitment; then made our way to the “Y” for the baptism.  I baptized Keifer and encouraged him to baptize his bride-to-be.

In all this comedy of errors (or is that victim of old age?) never once did they get upset or condemnatory.

2 Strikes. Grace applied. Mission accomplished. 🙂 I shared this story (a bit longer though) with the people Sunday when the couple came forward to receive their new Bibles and to be introduced. The people laughed.

You see, grace isn’t always God to us. Sometimes grace is us to us. I’m glad I received a living, breathing example of grace applied.  How about you?