Alien Mama

God has given me four precious children to care for and to love, and every fiber of my being wants the very best for them.  Yet, I am unable to fully be the mother I want for them.  I hope to model Christ to them, yet, even on my best days, I fall miserably short.    And before you say that I am being way too harsh with myself,  I want to remind you that Christ himself says "be holy even as I am holy".  

So, I wrestle with God.  He called me to be holy, and I want to be holy.  But I am not holy.  I grumble and whine; I am unkind and rebellious.  Heck, I may even throw in a lie and a cuss word, to boot.  So, I ask Him, "How can that be?"  Scripture tells us that if we follow Christ he will make us a new creation.  If we believe in Him, we will be born again.

I have believed.  I do believe.  So, what about the rebirth, the new creation?  I see it in myself in part, but, certainly, not in full.  Did God leave me out?  Did he get stuck in the middle of my transformation and just leave me unfinished?

Or did I misunderstand what His new creations will look like?   In church on Sunday, my heart was pricked and my mind stunned.  I began to consider that perhaps the essential transformation of the believer is not that of sinfulness to holiness, but of independence to dependence.  

Christ speaks of God's people as being aliens or foreigners in a strange land.  We have become like astronauts living on the moon or scuba divers under water.  We are beings living in an environment totally foreign to us and completely incompatible to our survival.  Divers and astronauts do not survive on their own strength.  They are sustained by an air source.   As Christians, we can not survive on our own strength.  Our air source is the breath of God flowing through tubes of grace.

If I am going to get up in the morning and be kind and loving,  it will be born out my dependence on Jesus .  My own goodness does not come from some thing I did in the past, but from the living Christ moving through me at that moment.   Moment by moment- breath by breath...we imperfect people live out the incredible dreams of God.

For you fellow mommies out there who go to bed at night exasperated by your own inadequacies (because little people are so good at helping us to see them).... please, breath.  Breathe deep the breath of God, and know his grace is sufficient for you (and for me.)  You are dear to the Father and His mercies are new for you at every moment and every breath.