A grace-filled touch

Cesare Pavese said, "We do not remember days, we remember moments." There are lots and lots of moments in my lifetime that come flooding into my thought on occasion, some bringing warm feelings of pleasure and others causing just a little bit of pain as a little bit of the memory of an old wound is recounted. I had one such unpleasant memory on my recent trip with my BFF while we were just sharing a little of ourselves. What struck me the most is that she sensed my intensely deep pain as she reached out and just simply touched my arm, and in an instant, without one word from her, the pain dissipated. God has a way of helping us even when we don't recognize we need that help, my friends. In any moment, we never know when a moment remembered can become a time of healing - no words necessary, just the touch of grace.

Praise the Lord! I thank the Lord with all my heart in the assembly of his good people. The Lord does wonderful things, more than anyone could ask for. The things he does are great and glorious! There is no end to his goodness. He does amazing things so that we will remember that the Lord is kind and merciful. (Psalm 111:1-4 ERV)

God's greatness isn't always displayed in big ways. We think Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments parting of the water kind of moments are those we will remember the most, but it can be the simplest of touches that brings the greatest of memories. The acts of God don't have to be catastrophic to be memorable! There are moments when we don't expect anything to happen, and we are caught off-guard by the greatness of God. There are other moments we look for the big "event" to reveal some majestic thing about God's grace and goodness, only to sense nothing more than his faithful presence with us as we go through them.

Moments define our past more than days. Moments define our present more than any accumulation of days. It is the accumulated moments that make up the memories we will take away. It can also be those moments that we commit to memory that can define us even when we don't want them to give us that particular definition. It sometimes becomes imperative to let go of some moments in order to allow the memories of those moments to no longer be our defining moments, though. The moments we want to define our lives are "grace moments" - those moments in time when God reaches in and just touches us where we most need a touch.

We may not always know which moments have defined us, but in God's faithfulness, he reveals those worth adding to our defined character and those which we should just let go of in order to no longer allow them to hold us bound to that definition any longer. When we have those "grace moments", we need to commit them to memory, recount them often, and allow the newness of their strength to envelope our lives. Just sayin!