Home: The Place of Grace

Brauner Stairs

Like many homes, a trip to our bedrooms upstairs is a trip down memory lane.  Family pictures remind us that time is the ever pounding wave on the shore of our lives.  I still think of myself with hair, weighing 190 pounds and ready for a pickup game of softball (without stretching).  Then I look in the mirror.

When I look in the mirror I see regret.  My deepest regrets deal with my family.

I should'a, could'a but didn't. 

Like the shadows that cross this picture, family life has its dark places.

And family life has its grace moments, those times of light.  Just as I have experienced some of the darkest times in my life in the context of my family, I have never received the grace of God like I have from my family.

"As holy people God has chosen and loved, be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle, and patient.  Put up with each other, and forgive each other if anyone has a complaint.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you." Colossians 3:12-13 God's Word to the Nations  

The miracle of God's forgiveness in Christ is that his grace is lived in the place where the darkness can sometime seem the deepest. 

You see, forgiven people forgive.  Husbands forgive wives.  Wives forgive husbands.  Parents forgive children.  Children forgive parents. 

Home is God's place of grace.

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Text and Photographs ©Copyright 2012-2014 Douglas P. Brauner.  ARR.