Grace in excess

Another one came the other day. It’s always exciting. Your heart beats a little faster, you can’t wait to get started and you wonder what it will be like this time. This time it was literally like Christmas three months later.

We received a package (thank you Muscatine!) with all sorts of goodies. There are so many people who want us to know that they care for us, that they are thankful for what we are doing and that they are thinking of us. This is one of the ways that they can show this. A box with jello, brownie mixes, ranch dressing and other goodies (like candy canes!).

This comes on top of the special attention given to Shirley during the Ladies Retreat (thanks to the members in Heidelberg). So now we have all sorts of special things tucked away for special evenings. Of course we have already worked through some of the goodies – sometimes you just can’t wait.

We are given so much – and I really don’t mean these special things that we are sent. God has given us so much already. We feel extremely blessed with a good home in a wonderful neighborhood, good neighbors in a safe country, more than enough to eat and more than enough clothes to wear. We have a wonderful family and are part of a wonderful growing family of God. And still there is more!

Sometimes people ask us what they can send us. “What do you miss?” That’s a hard question. We don’t really miss anything. We have so much. And to be honest, the things we are sent in the care-packages are not things we need, or even miss. But I don’t think that is how they are meant either. They are the hugs that can’t be given just now, an extra above-and-beyond show of love and care.

We are spoiled. Thank you. That’s all we can say – from the bottom of our hearts.

But it is exciting to see how you help us learn to do the same for others. I hope that you were just as excited when you were packing the box, sharing in the excitement that you knew would come when it was opened. That is what we feel too as we think of how we will share this excessive grace – and now I’m not only talking about the goody boxes. Isn’t it great how God continues to shower so much on us, more than we really need? Simply because he loves us and wants us to know this.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurabely more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21