Where I First Met Grace (FmF)

Photo courtesy of Barb Utley.

Linking up with Lisa Jo Baker for another Five minute Friday. Prompt is grace.

I still remember the day.

I walked through the gangway, around the back of the brick bungalow and opened the basement door.

Inside the smoke-filled room I saw long tables set up with scraps of paper and Bibles piled on the end. There were bowls of pretzels and twenty-year-olds sitting around crunching. The aroma of coffee filled the room.

Then Lois Peterson, a woman with long dangling earrings sat down on a stool and started talking. She instructed us where to turn in our Bibles. She assigned verses to those who raised their hands.

I felt a warmth I never felt before.

Lois talked about God like she knew him. I mean personally knew him. Her blue eyes sparkled as she told us we could know we were going to heaven.

Lois said God loved us so much he sent his Son to die for us. That when Jesus died on the cross he shed blood. And because he never sinned it was perfect blood. The only thing that could take care of our sin.

Lois called salvation a gift—something we couldn’t work for. Because if we earned it, then it would no longer be a gift.

And she said it was because of God’s grace that Jesus died. All because of grace.

It was the first time I had heard the word. I had heard about Jesus dying before, I didn’t realize how it personally affected me.

What Lois talked about wasn’t something I could do, it was something God had done.

She explained when Jesus said, “It is finished” when he was on the cross, he was talking about the payment for our sins, for my sins. That it was his blood that washed them away.

And I was hungry for this thing called grace.

I knew I was a sinner. I lived with me.

I wanted what she offered. I opened my heart and believed it.

I accepted God’s gift, Jesus.

And that’s where I met grace.