Word of the Year 2013

Readers tell me that my writing is very visual. After reading After the Snow Falls, numerous people have told me that they can see the story like a movie in their minds. So when it came time to choose a word for 2013, the picture the word evoked was just as clear as the word itself: I had seen others choosing words or pictures for the year, and frankly at first I didn’t plan to jump on the bandwagon. Mostly because nothing seemed to inspire me, particularly. And yet, I believe it’s important to set one’s course, and had some goals I wanted to set for the new year. I sensed a stirring, and I am certain good things are ahead. I wanted a way to set that out clearly, and what better way than a word and a picture? But still nothing occurred to me. Then on January 1st, this verse dropped in my heart as “my verse” for the year:

And God is able to make all grace about toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work – 2 Corinthians 9:8

And then someone repeated the verse in a sermon I heard. He mentioned in that sermon that in this year, God wants to teach people grace. So I dug up a book I knew I’d heard of recently and bought it for my eReader. In it, the author, Tony Cooke, defines grace, not with the typical definition one hears repeated to explain grace, but with this simple phrase: grace is love in action. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t believe I’ve often been a recipient of grace before. Certainly over the last couple of years, I’ve been very much aware of the grace of God functioning in my life and the lives of our family members. And yet I feel I’m just learning what it really means and all that God makes available to his children because of it. And it’s begun to seem like such an inexhaustible subject–one of those things that the more you understand it, the more you know you’re just barely scratching the surface. So welcome to 2013, the year of grace. I can’t wait to see all that will unfold.