Thursday, December 10, 2015

Prostitutes and Princesses {Day 10}

We started reading our Christmas devotional a few days early this year because we always fall behind and I always get frustrated:)
Not that I am a control freak or anything.
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp is hands-down my absolute favorite devotional that we have ever done.  It is both visually and literarily beautiful, stunning into smiling silence even my eight year old!
So today we read about Rahab.  The prostitute.  I explained very carefully (so as not to open up THAT can of worms) what a prostitute is.  I read about the red rope, the two spies, the promise made and kept, and the faith of a harlot that saved both her and her family.  I read about grace...beautiful, irrational, heart-changing grace and how God took a prostitute and turned her into a princess.  And not just any princess, but the great-great-grandmother of King David.  And not just the great-great-grandmother of King David, but the (as Ann so sweetly calls her) the "many-many-many-times great-grandmother of JESUS."

And do you know what blessed my soul the most this morning? The wide-eyed delight and gasp of shock that my precious youngest three let loose when they heard that.  And when we asked the question...of how Jesus has been a lifeline to us?  My eight year old Ethiopian princess said, "He gave me a family, a good family, so that I don't have to be stuck in Africa with no food."
My son looked at her with surprise.  "You really had no food?"
"No, I really didn't."
Oh,  my heart.  After five years home, this is the first time I have heard her speak this matter-of-factly about her past.  And it was not out of a need to be dramatic, but out of a realization of what is compared to what once was.

What gratitude filled my heart that this little girl can see the beauty that has come from her hard, how Jesus was the rope that led her to safety and hope.  That she looks at me know with eyes of love and quietly sits close when we read together so that her cheek is touching my arm.

This is grace...beautiful grace.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Let's keep the conversation going...