Grace for All

What happens when a person looks up to the hills and puts her faith in the Lord? The answer is illustrated in the life of Emma Gatewood, more famously known as Grandma Gatewood of Gallipolis, Ohio, who was the first woman to walk the Appalachian Trail in its entirety in 1955 at the age of 67. In the years following, she walked the trail two more times.

Emma Gatewood’s life up to her walk was filled with adversity. Born into a family of fifteen children, she suffered an alcoholic and abusive father. She was only able to attend school through the eighth grade. At the age of 19, she married Perry Gatewood, a well-educated man who nevertheless turned into a violent alcoholic husband. She raised 11 children, worked in the fields and suffered physical abuse. Finally in 1939 she left Perry and filed for divorce, at a time when divorce was unheard of. Her case was so compelling she received alimony and custody of the three children still at home.

Self-educated and a voracious reader, Emma Gatewood ran across an article on the Appalachian Trail in an old National Geographic Magazine. In 1955 she told her children she was “going for a walk.” 146 days later, she had traveled from Georgia to Maine and ended at the peak of Mount Baxter, where she signed the register and said, “I did it; I said I would do it and I’ve done it.”

Because she was a unique traveler, local newspapers along the way carried stories about her. But that was not the end. She became a noted speaker and increased the popularity of hiking and building trails. In spite of the problems she encountered on the first trek. Grandma Gatewood set out a second time and discovered that her experiences had inspired others to hike and improve the trail. She hiked the Oregon Trail at the age of 76, and in 1967, she hiked the Appalachian Trail a third time. By the end of her life, she had walked over 14,000 miles and inspired many along the way.

Emma Gatewood looked up to the hills and found her help in God’s natural world. She became a role model to both women and men for turning adversity into adventure. Hers is an unusual story but not unique. As with Emma, we can trust in God and in the beauty of the hills around us to summon deep resources inside our souls.

Dear Lord, help us to remember that you are always around us, in the hills, in the valleys, and on the plains of our lives. We know that our help comes from you, the Maker of heaven and earth. Amen.

This devotion was written by Laura Derr and read by Amy Large.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Welcome to the Saturday episode of the Grace for All podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Saturday is a special time when we take a few moments to review the scriptures that we have cited in the episodes this week.

If you missed any of those episodes, you might want to consider listening to them today. And even if you heard them all, there may be one that you might want to listen to again. We hope that each of these scriptures and podcasts will bring you a full measure of joy, peace, and love.

Now, let's listen to the scriptures that have been on our hearts this week.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

We sing the wonderful hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” with such warmth that it’s easy to imagine it coming from a quiet, sunny morning. It didn’t. Those words grew out of destruction and rubble.

Almost the whole book of Lamentations is raw grief. In 586 BC, the Babylonians took Jerusalem, and it wasn’t just a wall or a building that came down. It was everything: home, freedom, worship, and identity. The people were dragged into exile among strangers, and underneath it all they suspected that their own unfaithfulness had helped land them there.

So it’s a sad and somber book. Which is what makes verse 21 so surprising. Right in the middle of the loss and grief, the writer stops and says, “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.”

Remarkably, the writer says this even though nothing around him had changed. The walls weren’t rebuilt. The exile didn’t end.

What changed was what he remembered. He remembered that God had been there with Israel when the nation faced tough times before. God hadn’t walked away this time either. Even in disaster, God’s love hadn’t run out.

And here’s the part I find most encouraging: God’s mercies are new every morning. They’re not a lifetime supply handed out once, but fresh daily, sized exactly for whatever is facing you today. Like manna in the wilderness, you get today’s portion, today. And that’s all any of us need. Just enough to get us through today.

Maybe you’re looking at something in your own life that feels destroyed — a relationship, a plan, a version of your life you’d counted on. The wreckage can be devastating. It can convince you there’s nothing left and you’re all alone.

Hope doesn’t start when the rubble clears. It starts when you remember who God has been to you before. Let that memory hold you up right where you are.

Even in the ashes, His love hasn’t quit, and His mercy is already up this morning, waiting for you.

Lord, when loss or regret threatens to consume us, remind us that Your covenant love is greater than our deepest ruins. Give us the grace to receive today’s mercy for today’s situation. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Chuck Warnock

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Made in His Image

More than 25 years ago, my dear friend’s son was born with a serious heart defect requiring multiple open-heart surgeries. I will never forget visiting them when he was just a toddler. At bedtime, I watched her dress him in his pajamas and tuck him in for the night. As she settled him in his bed, she took her finger and lovingly traced the long scar on his chest as she said these words, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I picture that tender moment every time I hear this verse. Knowing that we are made in God’s image, I think, is not so much about us trying to identify with God as it is about the realization that God identifies with us. We have the assurance that God knows our hearts—literally and figuratively. God knows our strengths and weaknesses, our greatest hopes and deepest fears. God knows all of our thoughts and our feelings. God knows where we are broken and where we are whole. God knit us together, and God knows all of it.

Beloved, God knows your scars more intimately than you do, and they are precious to Him.

Today, can you picture God tracing those scars, visible and invisible, with God’s own hand and saying to you, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made?”

Creator God, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When I feel overcome by the awareness of my flaws, remind me that you see beauty where I see scars. Help me believe that you lovingly knit me together and that your works are wonderful. May I bring glory to your name. Amen.

This devotion was written and read by Greta Smith.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Some years ago, Catherine Nance described in a sermon the concept of thin spaces. According to Google, Thin spaces (often called thin places) are unique locations or moments where the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual realm feels exceptionally close. I instantly knew that what Catherine was describing was more than just conjecture but was, in fact, real.

Scripture is full of instances where people experience the very real presence of God. For Jacob, it was a vision of angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven. For Moses, it was the burning bush. For Peter, James, and John it was the mount of transfiguration where the countenance of Jesus was transformed and they fell on their faces in awe of the moment. And for Saul, it was a blinding light that knocked him off his horse. Moments when the spiritual is so close to the physical that it is exceptionally real enough to reach out and touch.

While not nearly so dramatic as these encounters, thin spaces have been for me something that I have experienced from time to time but could not adequately describe before. Most often, it comes in the form of music that is so overwhelming that I can no longer sing but simply mouth the words.

“Hear him ye deaf, his praise ye dumb, your loosened tongues employ. Ye blind behold your Savior come and leap ye lame for joy.” Charles Wesley obviously knew the overwhelming joy of being in the presence of Jesus.

Or...

In this moment, I am in the thin spaces along with those shepherds.

Sometimes it has been in the liturgy of the sacraments of baptism and communion when it becomes almost impossible to recite those sacred words aloud. I have had moments in delivering home communion where it becomes difficult to get through the words without breaking down.

And sometimes it is simply reciting the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

There is a common phrase, “If you know, you know.” I am persuaded that these experiences are more than simply an emotional response to well written and familiar phrases. There is, I believe, an unmistakable reality of being so close to the spiritual realm, that the physical simply cannot bear it.

So, what is it for you? When watching a sunrise or sunset, does a sob suddenly well up in your throat that you weren’t expecting? Are you overwhelmed by purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plains? Or is it simply a touch or a laugh from someone dear to you?

I know that what I believe is real. But in these thin places I can actually reach out and touch what I believe.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the times where the spiritual and physical collide in such a way that there is no doubt. Thank you for revealing Yourself to us in ways and moments that affirm for us that You are ever present and oh, so real. Amen

This devotion was written and read by Charlie Barton.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Twice now I have taken part in the funeral of one of my children.

Barry, our oldest son, passed away more than eight years ago. Hannah, our oldest daughter, passed away only nine months ago.

Each of those losses shocked me to my core. I found myself asking, How will I ever get through this?

It turns out that is a common question when we face grief. We ask it after the death of someone we love, but also after the loss of a job, a devastating diagnosis, a miscarriage, or any loss that divides life into before and after. The question is so common that grief researcher Lucy Hone used it as the title of a book about living with and through grief.

Psalm 30 gives us the image of a long, dark night: “Weeping may stay all night.”

When you are in the middle of that night, it can feel as though morning will never come. Grief has a way of convincing us that this is simply what life will feel like from now on.

But the psalm doesn't deny the weeping. It doesn't tell us to cheer up or get over it. It simply reminds us that the night is not the whole story.

“By morning, joy!”

Morning doesn't erase what happened during the night. I would give anything to have my children back. That ache does not disappear because the sun comes up.

And yet, somehow, the sun does come up.

We laugh again without betraying the people we have lost. We notice beauty again. We discover moments of gratitude, connection, even joy. The scar remains, but life grows around it.

These two truths can live together: we can carry grief and still experience joy.

So when you find yourself in one of those dark nights, when it seems impossible to imagine morning, hold on to this promise: The night is real. But the night is not forever. The sun will come up again.

And joy comes in the morning.

Father, when we find ourselves in the dark nights of grief and loss, stay close to us. When we cannot imagine that morning will ever come, help us trust that darkness will not have the last word. Hold us through the weeping, and help us recognize joy when it begins to return. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Donn King.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Where do you find comfort?

Some find comfort in other people—a safe place where they know they will be loved no matter what. Children find comfort in their blankie or the soothing sensation of a pacifier. Others find comfort in food—there are some things that only a cupcake can fix!

We are all looking for comfort in our lives in some form or another. Sometimes we don’t recognize it because it has become a habit, or simply because we live so comfortably. If we were to take away our phones, our social media followers, our money and possessions—or even our homes or our health—we would quickly see how much of our lives is built around comfort and how, in a split second, we can find ourselves deeply uncomfortable.

The book of Isaiah is no stranger to this theme of seeking comfort. In this part of Isaiah, God’s people have experienced exile, suffering under Babylonian captivity and pleading with God for relief. In chapter 53, we learn about a Suffering Servant and how his suffering would become the means through which God’s people would receive redemption and salvation. And this promise would not be limited to Israel alone—it would extend to all nations.

Then we arrive at Isaiah 55, where God speaks to people who are weary, thirsty, and longing for something more:

“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink— even if you have no money!

Come, take your choice of wine or milk— it’s all free!”

Notice that God does not say, “Get yourself together first.” God does not tell them to earn their way back or prove that they are worthy. God simply says, “Come.”

Come if you are thirsty.

Come if you are empty.

Come if you cannot afford what you need.

Come and receive what only God can give.

This is where the comfort of God is different from the comforts we usually reach for. A cupcake can make a hard afternoon feel a little better. Our phones can distract us. Money and possessions can provide a sense of security. Even the people who love us most can sit beside us in our pain. But none of these things can satisfy the deepest hunger of the human heart.

God’s comfort does not always mean that our circumstances immediately become comfortable. Sometimes God’s comfort comes as the assurance that we are not abandoned in the uncomfortable places.

The people of Israel still had a journey ahead of them. They would have to leave what had become familiar, return home, and rebuild what had been broken. Yet God promised that they would not make that journey alone:

“You shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.”

Maybe you are in an uncomfortable place today. Something has changed. Something has been taken from you. Perhaps the things you once depended upon no longer provide the security they once did.

Hear God’s invitation to you: Come.

Come thirsty. Come weary. Come uncertain. Come without pretending that everything is fine.

The truest comfort is not found in a life where nothing difficult ever happens. It is found in knowing that wherever life takes us, God is already there. The God who sustained Israel in exile, brought redemption through the Suffering Servant, and invited the thirsty to come and drink is still offering living water today.

So, where do you find comfort?

May we learn to find it not only in the temporary things that make life easier, but in the everlasting love of the One who promises to meet us, sustain us, and lead us home in peace.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, when we are thirsty, empty, or afraid, remind us that your invitation still stands. Help us release the comforts that cannot truly satisfy us and trust in your presence. Meet us in every uncomfortable place, sustain us for the journey, and lead us forward with joy and peace. Amen.

This episode of Grace for All was written and read by Reverend Teanna Black, an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Psalm 46 was likely written for a nation under siege—some scholars connect it to the night Jerusalem woke up to find an invading army gone, the threat dissolved overnight with no explanation the city had engineered for itself. The Hebrew word for refuge here is machaseh (mah-khah-SEH), a shelter, a place you flee to when there's nowhere else to go. For people behind those walls, machaseh wasn't a metaphor. It was the stone and mortar keeping them alive while the siege dragged on, day after day, with no guarantee of how it would end. It's a song written by people who knew what it was to be sheltered in the middle of danger, not just delivered from it afterward.

A specific time in my life comes to mind when I read Psalm 46. It's not the first story I'd tell about my faith, but it's the one that surfaces without fail whenever I get to these verses.

I spent much of the last few years before I retired overseeing a portfolio of capital projects at the university where I worked. The largest one I ever managed was an athletic and recreation center—a $28 million build. When we signed the contract to host a large summer camp of athletes in the facility, we had months of schedule cushion. But construction eats cushion. Delays, weather, small scope changes — each thing is reasonable on its own, until one day the cushion is gone, and you're up against a date you can't move.

One thing stood between us and opening: the handicap spaces in the parking lot still needed striping before we could get our certificate of occupancy. The lot itself was already paved. We just needed dry pavement long enough to paint the lines. And it would not stop raining.

By the Thursday before the campers arrived, we still didn't have the certificate, and there was no plan B—no other facility that could hold a camp that size. If the certificate didn't come through, we were canceling a contract in front of people counting on us.

There's no other way to say it. This was trouble—the real kind, out of my hands, with a clock I couldn't stop.

After a sleepless night, I got out of bed well before sunrise that Thursday, completely undone. I told God, plainly, that I was lost. My men's Bible study met that morning, and I told them everything—the lot, the rain, the deadline. They prayed with me, and I remember it being a real prayer. The rain was still coming down sideways when we finished, with more of the same forecast for the next day. I left not knowing anything had changed, but somehow at peace with the situation, wherever it might lead.

The storm broke that morning. By mid-morning Thursday, the rain had cleared, and the pavement was dry enough for the crews to paint the lines. The county signed off, and we had our certificate of occupancy Friday afternoon. The athletes arrived Monday, and the camp ran without a hitch.

When we got that certificate Friday, I walked into the empty arena by myself and sat in the circle at center court. I lowered my head and thanked God for his provision. I didn’t earn it, and I couldn’t have solved the problem.

It's been seven years, and I still can't tell this story without something catching in my chest.

I don't know why the rain broke when it did, and I'm not going to pretend I do. It's a miraculous story, and I'm humbled every time I tell it. And although I associate the whole thing with Psalm 46, it isn’t really what the Psalm is about. It isn't a psalm about rain clearing or a miraculous rescue. It's a psalm about refuge. And for me, the association isn’t Friday afternoon; it is Thursday morning.

Friday was the rescue—the moment the actual trouble lifted, the thing I'd been praying for. But Thursday morning was the refuge. A group of men I love and respect all owned my trouble with me, agreed, and prayed with me. Not for resolution. Not for success. For peace. For wisdom. For God’s will. They were a refuge for me. A shelter in the storm. A machaseh.

You may be carrying a Thursday of your own right now—something with no plan B, no clear Friday in sight. I can't promise you the rain will break on your timeline. But I can tell you where the refuge is. It's not waiting at the end of the story, for whenever the ending finally arrives. It's already here. The Psalm says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Machaseh doesn't wait for resolution. It asks you to put your trust in the eternal refuge before you have one.

Lord, when the ground is shaking and we can't see a way through, be our refuge before we see the outcome, not only after. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Cliff McCartney.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

You are listening to Grace for All, a daily devotional podcast produced by the people of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee.

This is Scripture Saturday, a time when we pause and reflect on the scriptures we have read throughout the week. If you missed any of our devotionals on these passages, you can find them on our website at 1stChurch.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, we invite you to listen and receive Grace. Welcome and thank you for joining us.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Lamentations is exactly what the name promises — five chapters of grief over a city in ruins, a people in exile, a covenant that seemed, by every outward sign, to have failed. The writer describes himself as a man who has forgotten what happiness is, whose strength and hope have perished.

And then, right in the middle of that wreckage, comes this turn: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed.

This isn't comfort offered from a safe distance, after the crisis has passed. It's comfort spoken from inside the rubble, by someone who has every reason to despair and chooses instead to remember. The mercies aren't new because the trouble has ended. They're new every morning. God's faithfulness isn't about whether our circumstances have improved. It's measured by whether God is still God, morning after morning, regardless of what the night before contained.

Many of us have sung the old hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," which comes directly from this passage. There’s no escape from trouble. But there is promise of a faithfulness that outlasts the trouble — summer and winter, springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses, all bearing witness to a mercy that renews itself daily rather than running out.

We tend to want comfort that changes our situation. What Lamentations 3 offers is comfort that changes what we can stand on while the situation remains what it is.

And that comfort is "new every morning." We measure faithfulness by consistency of outcome — did the plan work, did the prayer get answered, did the trouble go away. Scripture measures it differently: faithfulness is God showing up again, today, possibly in a way different from yesterday.

That's covenant language. It's the same God who bound himself to Israel in the wilderness binding himself to us now — not because we've earned it, but because that's who he has committed to be.

If you're in a season where the comfort you want hasn't come, this passage doesn't ask you to pretend otherwise. It asks you to notice that you woke up this morning still held, still experiencing the mercy that has been been renewed once again today. Your discomfort may be the same, but God offers new mercies morning by morning.

Lord, when our circumstances offer us no comfort, let us find it in you — not because our trouble has ended, but because your mercy is new again this morning, as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow. Great is your faithfulness. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Jim Stovall.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.