Currently I'm living with and trying to help my 80-year-old mother. I gain many benefits by this arrangement as she is a sweet woman and loved by many. There's a lot to be said for the goodwill garnered by those around you.

On a recent Sunday, she was prayed for multiple times and I was grateful for the encouragement. One special prayer was that God would prepare a way for her to connect with a neighbor in trauma, and the answer to that prayer was most surprising. On Tuesday a police officer came to our door while I was at work. He informed mother that the license tabs on one of our cars had been expired since February and she had one week to rectify. While they were talking she asked whether or not the recent road closure meant that there would be road work done on our block.

Being a good daughter, especially when prompted by police officers , I immediately arranged for us to get the required license tabs, which we did that evening.

It was a good evening's work and we thought we were done. God had another idea which came to my mother the next morning. She realized she now had something to call our neighbor about, information that would be of benefit to her. Prayerfully she connected with this neighbor to share her information and it opened the door. Our neighbor was being visited by her sister and together they came over and took a tour of our backyard. We have a nice backyard and we're particularly proud of the funky and makeshift garden fencing with its crib headboard for a gate. The ladies enjoyed our swing and were so pleased with the garden, as the tomato plants reminded them of their own mother’s large garden from years past. As they took the tour something was mentioned about prayer and Mom seized the opportunity. Soon they were holding hands and praying together. What a blessing!

I am so grateful that God is in the business of answering prayers!

God is a huge concept, not to mention a huge God. Grappling with biblical contradictions like predestination and free will can tax a person's understanding. And, while I don't believe we have to understand everything, there is in the Bible, often we find comfort in things we can understand.

One of my first blogs was titled, 'Who's going to hell,' and the discussion that led to that blog helped me to realize that Jesus's death on the cross was God's only option for saving us. Before that discussion I felt like God was infinite and the possibilities were just as infinite; however, after that discussion I realized that the infinite possibilities were narrowed down by God's desire to design us to have free will. In the end, God's only option was to offer salvation through Christ's death and resurrection.

So, back to that free will and predestination concept. I have recently thought of this conundrum as similar to philosophy's theory of infinite realities, or maybe they call it quantum realities, where there is a reality for every conceivable possibility for how life can turn out.

When I described this to my sister, using the scene from Star Trek at the top of this post, she challenged me as to why God would then allow one person to live and another person not to, one person to get saved and another not to, as He chose this particular reality, and, for at least today, I think I have the answer. I believe it's the same answer as to why Christ had to die on the cross. I believe that when God looked at the infinite possibilities for how this world could go, the current line of history is the only line that allowed His message, His purposes and His deliverance to be fulfilled. It was the only one where we could have free will and still have God's message of love and God's plan of salvation made available to us.

How grateful I am that God chose this reality with this life for me.

Have you ever read or heard a Christian quote and thought 'something's a little off here?' This has been happening to me a lot lately. I'm actually rather glad to see it because it means that I'm growing in my understanding.

A while back my sister wrote a devotional she named, 'Gasping for Grace' and called it a devotional for discouraged dieters. While I need to diet, I tend to work at eating healthier as opposed to reducing my calories, yet I have found this devotional book to be life-changing. Her 31 daily devotions look at the huge concept of grace and break it down into bite-size pieces that come out like courses in a gourmet meal. The truth they provide has required several readings to sink in, but I can finally hear a new understanding of grace in my self-talk. How grace allows me to turn condemnation into a way to grow closer to God and to grow in maturity. How I can look at quotes like "Give it your best, then give it to God." and see why the Holy Spirit doesn't show up until the end of our ability to do things ourselves. I can read a prayer that's more like an apology and wonder 'where is the God-given power in that?' But especially when Satan comes to me with regret, I can take that memory to God and say, "God, I did that and I'm sorry. Thank you for forgiving me. Is there anything I need to do about that today." And during that process I know His presence and His blessing and at the end of the process, I show Him the gratitude of my heart. What a peace it brings! And, of course, the hope is that this personal understanding and application of grace will spread to the understanding and application of grace to others.