You read the title wrong. Go read it again, but this time say it like you say “grass”.
That’s the name that she offered this morning when I talked to her. Grace was dressed in tight clothes, hanging around the church gate and watching my younger sisters teach Sunday School under a tree.
“Grace,” I repeated, smiling. “That’s a nice name. Have you ever heard of the grace of God?”
Grace shook her head. She was around thirteen and her eyes looked like walls. Big, dark walls shutting off her thoughts from the world.
We stood there for a while as she joked with the riff-raff group of children who had come off the street with her. I was desperately trying to think of a way to share the Gospel with her that would seem at least somewhat normal. Trying to find a way to get past the walls she was guardedly putting up around her heart as I talked with her.
“Where do you go to church, Grace?” I asked.
She gave me that look again – a searching glance as if trying to see if she could trust me. I waited for her answer, but her little brother broke in loudly, “She doesn’t GO to church!”
As I wondered how to respond to that, a man came to shoo Grace and her group away. He told them that they were soiling the church of God. What?!
The house of the God of grace who came for sinners and to sinners is turning people away?
But the answer came back swiftly to my heart as I slowly walked back to my sisters; Do you really believe even He can change her?
I had to admit that I had doubts, but….Yes. I do believe. I must believe. Please, please pray that even Grace will receive grace…
