Grace: thankfully, God doesn’t work like I do.
Student Ministries Pastoral Letter | November 2025
There’s a tree in my backyard that I almost gave up on. It looked dead, bare branches, no green for months, bark cracked and brittle. I thought about cutting it down more than once. I even told myself it would be more “efficient” to start over with something new, which is what I usually say when I’m too impatient to wait. But one spring morning, I saw a tiny bud pushing through. By summer, the tree was alive again, full of leaves I didn’t think it had in it. I laughed and told my wife that the tree must’ve heard me talking about it and decided to prove me wrong.
Grace works like that.
It’s not that the tree brought itself back to life; it simply stayed rooted in good soil. Grace does the same for us. It’s God’s unearned favor, His life flowing into what looks dead, His love reaching into places we can’t fix ourselves. And often, His grace is already at work long before we see the first signs of life.
But grace doesn’t just restore us personally; it reshapes how we see the people around us. When we really understand how freely we’ve been forgiven, it changes how we show up in relationships. We stop keeping score. We become a little more patient with others’ weaknesses because we remember how patient God has been with ours. Grace turns comparison into compassion and competition into community. It helps us breathe a little easier. We don’t have to earn anything from God. We don’t have to prove our worth to each other. We just have to receive what has already been given.
In a month marked by gratitude, it’s good to remember that everything we’re thankful for begins and ends with grace. The breath in our lungs, the forgiveness of sin, the friendships that lift us up, even the stubborn tree that refuses to die, all of it is a gift from the God who loved us first and loves us still.
“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in sin. It is by grace you have been saved.”
Ephesians 2:4–5
My prayer for us this November is that we not only receive grace but live out of it, slow to judge, quick to forgive, generous in love. Because when grace takes root in us, new life always follows.
Watching for new leaves,
Mark Gaines
Director of High School
