"Goodness Gracious."

Ever get hit by God's grace in such a way that it leaves you unnerved and overwhelmed because for some reason He's been so good to you despite you? I'm in a weird season in life and this is a part of it. It demands a response of stewardship. I guess in my situation, I should go play basketball more ... (For some reason, scrawny, lanky kid that I am, God protects me from injury time and time again).

I don't know how to describe how I'd answer the great question "How's life?". It's far from tedious. It's not really excitement upon excitement, but I quite enjoy where I'm at right now ... with all its messiness and my imperfections getting rubbed against, and collided with the perfect God-man, Jesus. I'm thankful that salvation isn't a one-time, one and done, time to do whatever deal ... but that God continually saves us from ourselves. It hurts. It produces agony, angst, and frustration but this is nothing new. Hebrews 11, especially verse 32 on ... and in particular, the last part, really stirs my heart up and strengthens me to keep going. The part "of whom the world was not worthy" (11:38) ... man, I love those verses that has that confidence, that assurance, that powerful, conquering faith that like Paul in Philippians says "What then?" (Philippians 1:18).

So I finally bought a handheld Bible the other day ... I've been kinda lurking (wrong word choice?) around the Baylor bookstore, looking for a good Bible on sale, and I finally found one! It was a New King James version (which I was sorta looking for anyway) and it was only $10! Anyway, one thing I noticed ... the equivalent for the ESV and perhaps NIV's word for "perseverance" is "long suffering" in the NKJV. I found that humourous in a way, and was like "hmm, that totally makes sense."

So I've been trying to get through Jonah lately, and one thing I learned that quite "whoa" ... The "great fish" was an agent for salvation, not an agent for punishment! I never knew that! I always thought Jonah was trippin' thus God done got a big ol' fish to eat that fool and puke him out later. It never occurred to me that the fish was an agent for grace instead of an agent of wrath. It opens up a lot of questions and requires more study of the character of God through just this first chapter or two. Aiya. Random, I'm kinda finding myself very interesting with the flood metaphors ... stuff with a huge, relentlessly violent body of water consuming people. I loved the imagery of fire (and us as the wood) in my study of Jeremiah before, but water has its own element of fear too. I like it.

Random again, I've been reminiscing quite a bit lately. How the heck did I get to where I am today? It blows my mind because man ... It's all God's grace.

Goodness gracious, this is long. Yay random things. Grace and peace BASIC,
-Jon