My friend, Kate Motaung, introduced me to her South African friend, Dalene Reyburn, and her compelling book Dragons and Dirt: The Truth about Changing the World – and the Courage it Requires. You can read my review of it here.

Today, I’m happy to welcome Dalene to this space as she helps us enjoy the gift of grace. I’m grabbing my rooibos tea and soaking in these life-giving, captivating words. Join me?

Because You’re Stuck (and Unstuck) by Grace

By: Dalene Reyburn

I love maps almost as much as I love travel.

Maps trace possibility. They connect the dots of flight paths and social media networks. They move us via trains, planes and Google Earth. Maps remind me that there’s adventure to chart. History to unearth. A future to discover.

Maps unstick me from thinking small and free me to live large.

And maps remind me of gravity – the great equalizer that holds us all down. Developed and developing nations, the rich and the refugee: no one’s floating away.

Gravity sticks us to this planet and there’s enough of it for all of us.

So when I cleared out some bookshelves and uncovered wads of folded maps from the backpacking I did in my twenty-somethings, I gave those maps to my boys. They wallpapered their room from Malawi to Israel, Canada to Scotland, and they were spellbound.

It felt good to gift them with a sense of context. I want them to grow up grounded by gravity – placed – and set free by possibility – called.

But the truth about being placed and called goes way beyond where we are and where we might go. We’re placed and called – stuck and unstuck – by grace.

It’s grace more than gravity that holds you in your God-designed on-purpose context. And grace is sufficient for you to stick it out where you are and fight the FOMO (fear of missing out) when sensational stuff is going down in places that are big trendy dots on maps where you don’t live.

Grace sustains you where God wants you.

Grace keeps you supplied and secure.

It sticks you.

Of course, stuck may be exactly what you don’t want to be. You don’t want to be stuck in your circumstances, not getting the mobility or the ministry or the momentum you crave. You don’t want to be stuck in the spin cycle of kids and crazy, dinner and deadlines and too often being too tired for sex.

It’s a refreshing relief to remember that God’s grace is changing grace. When you’ve met Jesus, and His grace has arrested your heart, it begins to change you. As John Piper says, grace is not just pardon; it’s power.

Grace is your escape from sin and self. It’s God’s love and tenacity, transforming ordinary you into an extraordinary reflection of your extraordinary Redeemer.

Grace makes you uninhibited, untamed, untrapped, unstuck.

You’re not the same today as you were yesterday, and you’ll be different tomorrow – because grace is changing you. The change might not feel earth-shattering in today’s boardroom or frozen-food aisle. But the change is eternal, and that’s seismic.

So the marvelous paradox is this: while grace is our peace and staying power – our stickability – on continents and in community, grace also unsticks us to move in obedience to God’s call.

Grace is our peace and staying power – our stickability – on continents and in community and grace also unsticks us to move in obedience to God’s call. @deereyburn Share on X

And grace unsticks in startling and subtle ways. Grace may move you to another city. It may move you to another cubicle. Or it may move you to show up one more time for the friend who hasn’t necessarily shown up for you.

On the You-Are-Here map of life, I don’t know where God’s grace has you today. But I know that it has you, and holds you.

And while none of us knows the future, I know for sure that there’s enough grace in all our tomorrows, for daily commutes and vast odysseys.

There’s enough grace to ground us, and set us free. -@deereyburn #UnravelingGrace Share on X

With Grace,
Dalene

Dalene is also the author of Dragons and Dirt: The truth about changing the world – and the courage it requires (foreword by Lisa-Jo Baker) and The Next Right Prayer: Daily hope for moms. She was a high school teacher before turning full-time writer and lunchbox-packer. She and her husband, Murray, have two sons and two very muddy golden retrievers.

Dalene Reyburn lives in Pretoria, South Africa, and shares weekly at dalenereyburn.com. Her latest book, Walking in Grace – 366 inspirational devotions for an abundant life in Christ (Christian Art Publishers, $12.99), is available where books are sold in the USA.

Maybe you get overwhelmed some days – by the state of the world, and the state of your heart. Maybe you need to be encouraged by authentic, practical Word wisdom. Maybe you need to rest. And maybe you need someone to tell you – regularly – that everything really is going to be okay in the end, because for us the end is just the beginning. If you can relate? This devotional’s for you.

Walking in Grace is for women of every age and stage of life, because we’re never too old to start leaning into our calling and never too young to have already glimpsed something of God’s destiny for us. These daily devotions offer you the grit and the grace to keep on being brave enough to use your time, gifts, capacity and unique areas of influence to live a story that shouts about God’s splendor.

(Get all the Walking in Grace devotions for January, for FREE!)

P.S. Add your encouragement over on the #RaRaLinkup!

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