I once saw a T-shirt that said, “Please pardon my mess. I’m still under construction.” I don’t own that shirt, but there are some days when I wish that I did.
A few years back I had a speaking engagement in Charlotte, North Carolina, which also afforded us the convenience of visiting the Billy Graham Library where Ruth Bell Graham is buried. Mrs. Graham, the wife of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham, was laid to rest there in a simple coffin made of birch plywood, modestly crafted by an inmate at a Louisiana correctional facility.
Her epitaph reads: “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.”
Mrs. Graham chose those words herself several years before her death. While traveling through a construction zone, she once commented, “What a marvelous image for the Christian life—a work under construction until we go to be with God. That’s what I want as my epitaph.”
Her words are a radiant reminder that our voyage here on earth is a continued work of grace. Jonathan Edwards once said, “Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.”
In this “construction zone” we live in, we have only begun in our experience of grace—our day of perfection is set apart for a much later chapter in the tomes of our faith journey. In this present chapter, however, we are spiritual paupers in need of grace every hour of the day. We often see and accept ourselves as God’s unfinished workmanship, but unfortunately we don’t always afford others that same token of grace.
What if God dealt with us in the same measure of grace that we deal with others? What if we were only forgiven to the extent that we forgave others? What if we were loved only to the degree that we have loved others? Miserable creatures we would be!
Yet God’s love is steadfast and faithful. His love is unconditional, and His grace is never limited by our spiritual bankruptcy, it is always extended in consistency with the fullness of His character, not ours.
In his letter to followers of Christ in Philippi, Paul gives hope to all of us still living in a messy construction zone called life. With brazen confidence he says, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace.” (Philippians 1:6-7 ESV)