The Extravagant Promise Of Grace

In a small Oregon town a 13­ year ­old named “E” recoils from the cascading impact of years of unhealthy relationships. The chasm in her life is relational, but her inability to process any of these feelings takes her to a place of deep disappointment and abandonment. Two weeks after her 14th birthday, E gives birth to a little boy.

Through the lens of statistics, the die is cast. Game over. Welcome to the road of life with no exits.

Predictions become reality when is kicked out of her home, baby in tow. She drifts from house to house. With each new couch she sleeps on her dignity wanes, to say nothing of her prospects for the future.

But God...

God audaciously extends a message of hope through a young woman in our mission. E was no longer alone.

E did not get a makeover or a do over... she experienced complete transformation.

Mercy and hope and love and community washed over her. Meaning and purpose consumed the void once filled with her screams for help.

The scandal of grace is that God invites desperate, lonely 14­year­ olds with infants in their arms to a new way of life. The word “new” fails to capture the change they experience. “New” could apply to a wardrobe or a vehicle or a school or a job, but in “God terms,” new means recreation.

E said yes to Jesus.

There was nothing cosmetic about E’s transformation. When she said “yes,” her world didn’t change, but her heart did, her prospects did, her story did. You see, Jesus doesn’t lift E out of her circumstances; rather, he gave her a context, perspective, and plan.

Like he did for E, Jesus frees us from the confines of our own choices and the pain­filled choices of others. And as we emerge, Jesus proudly presents us as His children—His masterpieces.

In rural Oregon, and in every repentant heart that embraces Jesus, the old is gone, the new...extravagant...wildly undeserved has come.