Grace, the Princess of the Pea

One of our Documented Faith weekly prompts under the monthly word "Authenticity" came late and this was the verse --

 

"For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing." ~ Romans 7:19. 

 

I refused to write out a memory card for that particular verse because I  thought Stephanie was giving herself an excuse for failing to send out the prompt earlier. I'm just stating my opinion, by the way, however, the week after that, our Pastor preached on Grace, by using an illustration of  the Princess and the Pea story by Hans Christian Anderson which fit so perfectly well with Romans 7:19, that I knew I  had to fill out my memory card with the additional "second verse" as a two-part memory verse -- one verse explaining the failure and the other verse telling of God's grace. 

 

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so Christ's power may rest on me. . . For when I am weak, then I am strong." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.

 

Grace looked like a half-drowned rat when she arrived at the door of the castle that rainy night asking for shelter. She said she came ahead on foot, because her carriage had broken down several miles back, and since she was a Princess, she felt she could ask at the castle for a place to wait out the storm so that her carriage could to be repaired and she could  be on her way. However, not knowing if this statement was true (about being a Princess), the Queen decided to test her to see just how sensitive she really was because everyone knows that only royalty are sensitive to the tenth degree and nobody but royalty would do for her son, the Prince, who wasn't married yet, so  the Queen had a bed in a guest room built up with several mattresses and she placed a dried pea under the bottom of the  stack. Of course, the next morning the Princess was terribly unhappy because she didn't get a wink of sleep and was black and blue from the hard place in the bed. And as you know the rest of the story, Grace passed the Queen's test with flying colors and she and Prince Charming got married and lived happily ever after.

 

Paul, on the other hand, to prevent him from becoming conceited, God allowed him to experience  a physical " thorn" that tormented him so. Biblical historians think it was some kind of handicap or chronic disease and Paul pleaded with the Lord to take it away three times, but the Lord did not. Instead he told Paul that his grace was all he needed, because when he was weak, then he was sensitive to the Lord's power and strength in his life. God knew how arrogant he had been before his Damascus experience and this thorn kept him humble and grateful.

 

I've had several people come to me recently and say to me, "The Lord wants you to be in good health, so all you need to do is pray for healing and he will heal you." And I've told them, it's all right if the Lord chooses not to heal me, for it may be in my best interest to not be to healed at that time. However, if the Lord so chooses, he can heal me as the good news I shared last week shows! I had a great grateful  praise and worship time last week into the wee hours of the morning after I received the GOOD NEWS that there was no shadow! No Cancer!

 

And today, to top it off, I received an cartoon in an email from a friend in another state. Ironically, it fits  in perfectly with the prevailing theme; Grace, after a long happy marriage to her Prince Charming is: