Today I picked up my cookie dough, I'd received 30 calls about it since Friday. It was the dreaded moment I'd hoped to avoid. Having missed lunch today, having discipleship group with 80 5th graders and teaching on the crucifixion of Jesus, I was hungry. And somehow those 2 tubs of carefully selected cookie dough worth $30 seemed that much more appealing.
I had 2 university students in the van with me who had come to help out this week. We had finished dropping the children off and began talking and sharing together. I told them of my 100 day journey to break the addiction of sugar in m life, one spoke of being addicted to sex outside of marriage and because of Jesus she was celebrating 3 years of purity and teaching other young women about who they are in Christ. The other spoke of her 5 months of freedom from cutting and self-injuring that Jesus had freed her from and it was in those quiet moments that I realized something.
All is grace when shared in the shadow of the cross. It was no small thing that today's message was about the highest price that Christ paid for our freedom, and of all the students that could have been in my van it was these two, both of whom are staying in different host homes this week. With a sheepish grin on my face I knew what I was to do. Handing them each a tub of cookie dough I congratulated them on their new-found freedom and I told them I wanted them to celebrate with their peers tonight, to lift up prayers of thanks to a God who would rescue them, and not only rescue but restore.
It doesn't matter what your hang up is, because Jesus was hung up so you could be free of your hang ups. It's all good but it's all God. Confessions of a struggle through the unplanned bad chapters of our lives, the excitement and passion of one who's been freed and so desperately wants other young women to know what she had to learn the hard way, and the freely giving and blessing of cookie dough that once would've been a stumbling block, yes all is grace. And when all is grace and every line of every chapter in our stories is written within the shadow of the cross, then and only then can so beautiful a community arise and together, yes we are better together. Grace and peace.
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