Penance in the Paddies

          Today I got to experience a completely new thing. I helped harvest the rice paddies. This involved about 13 guys, 8 of which went around with little blades and chopped the rice stalks in half. They then leave little piles of half cut rice stalks all over the paddies, and the remaining 5 go slogging through the mud to collect the good half for harvesting. I was one of the 5 going around picking up the little piles and brining them to an enormous pile. After all the stalks are piled up they are then fed through a machine that separates the actual rice from the stalks, and the rice is put into large sacks weighing about a hundred pounds each. To give you an inkling on how much rice we collected, we filled about twenty, 100 pound sacks. It feeds the kids and staff everyday, 2 or 3 meals a day for about a month and a half. So this was a ton of rice!
          I had such a great time! It was so refreshing to do some good old fashion manual labor. We had to walk around picking up this rice in knee high mud. I felt like Charlton Heston making bricks without straw in The Ten Commandments. The paddies are home to tons of animals. I saw tons of toads, snails, and the most spiders I've ever seen in my life. I was also told that sometimes there are snakes and leeches, but I charged ahead and loved every second. With my clothes and body covered in mud (I hope, but doubt that it was all mud!) I was able to internally wrestle about a question of my faith that this time here in the Philippines has made me think about.
          I've struggled a lot with the question of if I truly believe that I am saved by grace alone. It's easy to think about grace when you are sweating, covered in mud, and putting in a some hard hours working with your hands. But I couldn't shake the question. Am I saved by grace? It's funny because I believe Christians are saved by grace, yet I have a hard time believing I am saved by grace. This reminds me of the story about G.K. Chesterton when The Times sent out a question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” and Chesterton responded,
“Dear Sir,I am.

Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

How can I think that others can be saved by grace, yet I can't. I guess that's the little Catholic in me thinking that I should have to do good things to make up for the sins I have committed. These thoughts can only bring despair because I know I will never be able to make up for my sins, but it is with that thought that I remember Jesus Christ died for me so that I would be dead to sin. I am free from its awful grasp, and for that I am so thankful! 

          While I was out there in the paddies I remembered this story that is told on the Indelible Grace album The Hymn Sing Live in Nashville. Here it is:

“Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go…this hymn was written by George Matheson who began to lose his sight in seminary…ended up eventually going blind.  He was engaged to a woman who left him – said that she didn’t want to be married to a blind man.  And he wrote this hymn on the night of his sister’s wedding.  His sister had lived with him and taken care of the house but now she was gone – off to her own life and he was home alone and he said that something of incredible sadness passed between him and the Lord and he said that this hymn came to him almost like it was dictated in the matter of about 15 minutes.   But I wanted you to notice there’s a particular line we’re going to get to in verse 3 where it says, I trace the rainbow through the rain.  And that image of the rainbow there in Genesis in the Noah story…it’s not like the little bow that you’d wear in your hair, it’s the word for battle bow.  And the picture that God gives us that he’ll never destroy the world again by flood is the picture of a battle bow cocked and aimed at Himself.  And what the cross is is that that battle bow has been loosed but not on us. So when trials come we don’t just try and keep our head up.  We grab hold of the covenant promise – the proof that God loves us – is that all the promises of the Bible are yea and amen in Christ, right?  Including that one – that he would never destroy the world because he destroyed his Son.  Therefore, as one of the Puritans used to say if you don’t understand justification by faith it makes every trial a double trial.  Because not are you only enduring the trial, you’re having to wonder if God hates me.  But if Jesus died in your place you know that his wrath has been fully poured out on his Son, right? So we have a love that will never let us go because we have a love that let his Son go in our place.”

He Giveth More Grace, and I will rest in that!