Grace: Now or Later?

26 Apr 2000 - Grace. Now Or Later?
My friend Kathy had her legs removed yesterday. Her left forearm and all the fingers on her right hand were removed last week. I hope it can stop there, but the doctors are giving little hope of that. I appreciate everyone that has prayed for her and asked about her.
I understand she is doing well emotionally. I saw her husband Saturday and he seemed to be doing well in that aspect also. My mother and I were talking about that last week. How would our spirits be in that situation? We were saying that we thought we might “freak out”. Or even worse, we might become terribly bitter and angry.
This made me remember the story of Corrie Ten Boom. She and her family hid Jews during WWII. And were caught and put in a concentration camp. Corrie’s entire family died in the camp. She wrote the book “The Hiding Place” about her life. She told a story about being with her father at a train station. They were discussing death. She was 10 years old at the time I think. She told her father that she was afraid to die. She had heard the term “dying grace” and told her father she didn’t have that. He asked her, “Corrie, when you need to take a train ride when do I give you the ticket? Do I give it to you several days before the trip, or a few hours before, or right before you get on the train?” She answered him that he handed it to her the very moment she was stepping on the train. He asked her why she thought he did it that way. Corrie said, “Because I don’t need the ticket before I get on the train.” He told her that God didn’t give grace out before it was needed either. When it was time to die He gave “dying grace”. When you have years to live you don’t need it yet.
That made me think. I can’t imagine losing my legs or arms, not to mention all of them. I know in my heart that I have no grace to handle that. And with just myself to rely on I would be bitter and angry and emotionally unstable. That is because at this moment in time (Praise God) I don’t need that particular grace. If the time were to come God would give it to me when I needed it, not before. I think it is the same way with other crises. I have seen parents lose their children and have the grace to handle it. I have seen people be diagnosed with terminal illnesses and hardly skip a beat. And now I have seen Kathy and Jeff accept the unacceptable.