His Kindness, My Repentance

It is the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance…Romans 2:4

This is a phrase in scripture that echoes in my mind a lot.  Sometimes I am just walking to work and it pops into my mind…sometimes I wake up with this verse on my mind…and sometimes I have to remind myself of this when I need hope in a situation, a person’s life, or my own life. This phrase often brings me to tears because it stirs something in my heart that I cannot explain. I believe God has put this phrase in my life as an echoing mission, something that He wants me to live out in my daily life and hopefully others will be drawn to His kindness as a contagious result.  In my own life it was (and still is) His kindness that surprised(es) me, and drew(draws) me to believe and repent.  This is a constant process, and when I forget of His kindness, I also forget of my need for His kindness...and I can feel it in a heaviness and lack of true joy. But then when I am reminded of His kindness…I am once again surprised and amazed.

Danny’s grandpa past away last week…and when we were with him in his last days, this verse was on my heart. What a wonderful man and grandfather...we were so blessed to have him in our lives. 


Through the death of Christen, this verse echoed as people in grief trusted God for the first time because of who God was in her life. When I see my cousins’ babies Tommy and Jack, I see life and God’s goodness and kindness…the goodness of God's creation that draws people in to believe. I believe it is in death and new life that we see so much of God’s strength and kindness in our lives.  So many days I miss it...God help me to cling to Your kindness...

Here are the lyrics of one of my favorite songs by Chris Tomlin based on this verse:

Open up the skies of mercy
And rain down the cleansing flood
Healing waters rise around us
Hear our cries Lord let them rise

It's Your kindness Lord
That leads us to repentance
Your favor Lord, is our desire
It's Your beauty Lord
That makes us stand in silence
Your love
Is better than life

We can feel
Your mercy falling
You are turning our hearts back again
Hear our praises rise to heaven
Draw us near Lord
Meet us here

Moving

Over the past year, Danny and I have been looking into buying a place.  Not because we are positive we want to live in Chicago forever (which is a question we have been asked quite a bit), but because at this point in our lives we would rather be paying a mortgage than rent, and we really want to invest ourselves in a community. Over the summer we found a place right down the street from us which was a “short sale”. We really liked it, we already loved our neighborhood (Roscoe Village) and we thought it made sense to buy it. As many of you know, the short sale process can be tricky and ironically a very long process.  Over the course of the 7 months we were waiting on the short sale, God started tugging on Danny’s heart about a particular corner of Chicago (Division and Clybourn). He started reading about it, walking around and praying there, however he didn’t want to tell me until he felt really sure about it.  We found out in December that our short sale fell through, and Danny said, “God has been speaking to me about somewhere else...” and he told me all about it. At first when he said, “well, it actually used to be Cabrini Green…” I froze inside because when I was in high school, I heard horror stories of Cabrini Green. However, he went on to tell me about the new park, the community garden, the new buildings and the restoration happening there. During the peak of the housing market, a developer started building town houses and mid-rises but then ran out of money during the downturn. The city of Chicago bought the property and are using it as sort of an experiment. Rather than pushing the low-income community out, they made it into mixed income housing where a variety of people can own and live. While there are mixed emotions within the community regarding this experiment, Danny and I are both energized by the idea of being a part of a community that is being restored.  We want to be part of that restoration and get involved in the community. 

We went to look at the last unit in the mid-rise building on the corner Danny was drawn to, and it actually sold while we were looking at it (another person looking at it literally pulled out his check book in front of us!).  The realtor told us that there is actually one townhouse (these are connected to the building) that will be for sale because it is the model home and the last town house just sold that week.  We went to look at it and loved it.  Just walking around we felt a peace and excitement that we have not felt looking anywhere else. It is way more spacious than we thought we could afford and it has a front yard…which is a miracle in Chicago. After we said, “We’ll take it!”…there have been many more confirmations that this is where we are supposed to be.  This whole process has been convicting and eye opening to me…for some reason I never really thought about God speaking to us about a home to buy, and we didn’t really seek Him when putting an offer down on the short sale.  However through this process, I have been amazed by His direction and provision. God wants to be involved in all parts of our lives….little and big…and this has been a really good reminder to me. We move in this weekend and we will keep you posted on what we are learning and experiencing.