Slivers of Gospel Light in a Dark Week

In the midst of dark times such as these, the slivers of light that the gospel of Jesus bears on peoples’ lives is always heartening.  And I’ve found in writing this blog these past years it’s the stories of grace in the midst of darkness that people respond to the most.

Hence I was overwhelmed by the responses from people towards the end of last year after I wrote the story about my mother’s grace towards my father in his dying days.  I remember taking a deep breath and pressing “publish” on that story, all the while wondering if it was a classic case of “overshare”.

Well if it were, then my abounding “sin” of oversharing was super-abounded by the response of so many who read it.  I had no idea that God would use it the way He did in peoples’ lives.

Of all of the responses of grace and repentance that I received as private messages, texts, phone calls, emails and the such, the most poignant, – and the one to bring tears to my eyes – was this way from an elderly lady in Queensland.  It arrived, handwritten, addressed to me at the school where our church meets.

Let me share it with you as an encouragement for wherever you are at:

Now I don’t want to be the person to say to any woman that she should stay with an abusive husband, even if that abuse is “only” verbal.

But I wonder what choices this dear lady had, when as a young woman sixty years ago she embarked on what would be a cruel life with a cruel man, who has now himself been cruelled by illness.

All I can say is that she’s had a hellish life, and would be perfectly justified in abandoning him in his hour of need, just as he abandoned her for sixty years, at least as far as being a worthwhile husband is concerned.

To think that God’s grace can transform her, even after sixty years, and even if he stony and hard as ever.  It’s hard to get our heads around that, but that’s how His grace works.

And that  indeed is a sliver of light in a dark week.  Let’s keep praying that those slivers descend upon us and spread out into our weeks, no matter the horrors we see, and read about on a daily basis.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)

Maranatha.