No Hypothetical Grace

     Another topic for the devotional I haven't been asked to give is: There is no such thing as hypothetical grace.  As a girl I would sometimes let myself imagine how I would deal with a death in my family or divorce, like so many of my friends had faced.  I was not a Christian then; I didn't know how the grace of God carries you through unbearable circumstances, but even as a Christian when my friends faced those impossible times,  I was convinced I wouldn't be able to.  That is because there is no such thing as hypothetical grace.  God doesn't give us His grace to face the possibility of loss, He gives it for the reality. 
     As a descendant of very long lived women, I will almost certainly face being widowed.  This is true for most women.  It is prudent to prepare for that by understanding your finances and life insurance, knowing the location of important papers, and how to take care of, or who to call, for car and house repairs.  As an older friend said while struggling to roll up her sleeping bag after a women's retreat, "If I'd known he was going to die, I'd have asked a lot more questions."  We can, and should, prepare beforehand in these ways, but we cannot prepare our emotions, we cannot cope ahead of time.  I often told my children, "The head doesn't tell the heart what to do."  This was mostly a warning against dating non-Christians, but it is also true for those hardships we anticipate.  We can prepare our mind, we cannot prepare our heart.
     When my children were young, I would see families in our church heartbroken over children who walked away from God.  I told God I couldn't bear such a thing and prayed that my children would be faithful all their lives. But when he turned 14,  my youngest, my loving son with a gentle soul, began to doubt and wander from God.  He didn't turn hard, but certainly ungrateful, like many teens, and he hid behaviors he knew we wouldn't approve of.  Although we allowed him to attend a different church with his best friend, we insisted he go to church until he turned 18. We could have made church attendance a condition of living in our home,  as some Christians do, but we felt that if a grown child is going to church only because he is coerced, it is probably of no benefit to him.  One of the things parents have to let go of when their children graduate, is the right to tell them what to do.  Our son is now 23, he still doesn't attend church or read his Bible.  He believes in God, but not that God is personally involved in his life.
      I am coping through these long years of waiting by the grace of God.  I have learned to look past the tattoos, piercings and cigarettes to the still gentle young man inside.  He is one of my favorite people to spend time with.  I remember that the God who began a good work in my son's heart when he was four years old, will be faithful to complete it.  I remember that where we end up depends more on God's faithfulness than ours.  If how we finish as Christians depended on us, none of us would remain obedient.  And I remember that I, too, struggle with seeing God as passive.
     Some of the best advice I read about Christian parenting was in a book by Edith Schaeffer, she wrote that the stage we are at as Christians is because of the experiences God has brought into our lives. He also has to do that in our children's lives, let them get there.  Naturally we want to spare our children from making our mistakes, but it isn't realistic to expect our warnings to impact them as much as real life experience.  Few of us fell into sins because we were never warned, all of us have a conscience, we simply chose to ignore the warning.
     There are Christian books promising godly children, good health and financial security, often these are worth reading because they contain good principles, but God has offered us no such guarantees for this life and the pursuit of them is a sinful pursuit.  Those promises are for heaven.  Sometimes these false hopes are based on biblical proverbs, which are statements of general truth, but not promises of God.  Hebrews 11:32-40 shows that many of God's greatest servants suffered incredible hardships, we will suffer as well, partly because it is the human condition and partly because of God's inscrutable plan for our lives. What God has promised is His presence in our suffering and His grace to endure, just when we need it, one day at a time.