Every morning on my way to work, I pass an auto body shop where inspirational messages are posted under the company’s name on a small billboard. For the last week or so, the message was posted as follows:

God Reaches And
Christ Embraces

When I first saw the message, I smiled. While I have always believed in God, He has seemed to be “out of my league” – or maybe just a little scary. Therefore, it has been through the loving and accepting embrace of Jesus that I have been saved from myself. So, of course I smiled. The person at the auto body shop understands how I feel and could sum in up in five simple words.

After a few days of passing by this sign, it hit me why the first letters of each word were underlined: alone, they spelled out GRACE. My first reaction to that realization was: “DUH!” I thought to myself, “Geez, Jessica, why didn’t you pick up on that right away? You can be so thick sometimes.” For a few miles after that I felt bad about myself. How could I have missed that? What kind of writer do I think I am when I don’t even notice something so obvious? (The hamster wheel of bad self-talk is often relentless.) But then, as I was sitting at a red light, another thought came to mind: “Wow, it’s a good thing God’s Grace isn’t so judgmental!”

Thank You God, that Your Grace was more than enough to conquer in me all the reprehensible behaviors of my past; that Your Grace is more than enough to conquer all the negative self-talk and self-centeredness I struggle with today; and that Your Grace will be more than enough to defeat all the battles against my soul that are yet to come. If I had to rely on my own grace, I would be in big trouble.