We recently sang this in church…the words seemed hollow…vinegar to the tongue. “All you have shown me is grace, love, and kindness” the words got stuck in my throat as I tried to sing them. It felt like I was singing a lie!

“All you have shown me is grace, love, and kindness”…That’s not true, Lord!  You have shown me torture, pain unmeasurable, crushing heartache, empty arms, gaping hole in my life….where is the grace, love, and kindness in that???  Where God, show me…I can’t see it. I am desperate to see it. I believed those words once. I still believe them, but my grief is like wearing blinders. I want to sing those words with confidence and integrity. But the lyrics seems confusing and insane from where I sit now. Help me to see your grace, love, and kindness, Lord.

When I sat down, after trying to sing that song, I realized I do see God’s grace in countless ways. And I do feel His love, it is real. And His kindness, well it too, is evident everywhere, when I truly look for it. But that is not all You have shown me, Lord. There is heartache, tragedy, anguish, desolation everywhere. Those lyrics seem false when I think of them in light of my life here. They seem untrue precisely, because I am viewing them from an earthly, physical, here-and-now perspective.

I am beginning to see they are only true in the eternal. In the Kingdom to come “all you have shown me is grace, love, and kindness.” Because of your Son, Lord, all I will know for eternity is “grace, love, and kindness.” Thinking on these truths in light of the eternal, they make sense to me and stop screaming insanity.  Spiritual sanity comes when I see all of life, death, and God’s promises with an eternal perspective. If I try to view many of God’s promises with a temporal view, they will seem skewed.  But if I look at them with an eternal viewpoint they bring comfort, rejoicing, and gratefulness!

Yes, Lord, I can see your grace, love, and kindness…