Grace

I love this story from Tijuana, Mexico. It comes via Riverside, CA. Eric Denton tells the story. Perhaps someone will read this account, who has not seen Eric’s Siempre newsletter. At right is

Grace; at upper left is Eric with David and Grace.

The church Eric pastors sponsors a children’s center in Tijuana--Siempre. It is part of their hands-on missions ministry. I read every issue of Siempre’s online newsletter. It reminds me what is happening in a world where God’s grace is in short supply. It shows me what happens when people give of themselves, share the story of Jesus, and make a positive difference.

What do you call an infant that has no name, Eric asked the other Sunday. How does one assume the great responsibility of naming a child placed in our care? What will their last names be if no one ever adopts them?

Alejandro, Siempre's director, told Central Church the story of getting the babies - how hard the people of DIF were working - how many babies they had to care for ... Eric could only think of how many never find the shelter of their care in Tijuana, a city of millions, a city that adds nearly a thousand new residents every single day, almost all of them living in poverty.

“What happens to those babies?”, asks Eric? Telling the story of these new infants on a recent Sunday morning, he spoke of infants without names. He reported “a woman in the church began to raise her hand like a kid in school, adding “it's been 25 years since I taught public school but it must be ingrained deep within.”

Mid-message, Eric turned and "called" on her: "Yes Jeri, do you have a question?"
"I know what we should name the little girl!" she said excitedly, "Grace!"

Suddenly, it seemed so obvious, says Eric, “the series I'm preaching, leading into Memorial Day Weekend is titled: Waiting for Grace. Grace had arrived... we just had to recognize and name her.”

Sharing the story with the leaders at Siempre, they immediately agreed that Grace was her name--Graciella in Spanish. “We then held the baby boy and as Dr. Ricks suggested, Jesus and Alejandro tried out Salvador.”

“Consuellos, the infants primary care giver, asked if we could name him David... said he seemed like a David to her... and so his name is David. God moves... we've prayed that God would give us the opportunity to help rescue abandoned babies as part of our work... now we've held them, named them... they're part of our lives and resident in our hearts.”

“He's given us the Grace we were waiting for,” concludes Eric, adding that “God moves and He changes us forever. Grace is waiting ... she's perfect, safe and at home at Siempre…”
To his congregation Eric says, “Grace is waiting to change your life. God moves. God's moving. Don't miss this moment of grace.”

Let no one of us miss our moment of “grace”, either to experience God’s moving in our own life, or to become a pipeline of God’s grace for another.

Wayne,
From Warner’s World,