A Testimate of Life

The Link for Susan Boyle's performance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Susan Boyle, a Scottish lady who stormed into the stardom with her unbelievably beautiful voice had swept a cynical audience and the judges on a reality TV show called “Britains’ Got Talent” on 11th April. Her powerful performance of "I Dream A Dream" from Les Miserables has took the World including the irascible Simon Cowell (also of American Idol and producer of the show).

Who Susan Boyle is as a person is a story of a good simple woman winning over a bad, complicated society. Ms. Boyle is 48 years old, unemployed, and she says never married or "kissed". I do not laugh here because I think of her more as pure rather than question anyone's desire for her or perceived lack of same. The worldwide sensation lives in her childhood home in West Lothian, one of 32 council areas in Scotland. (FYI, West Lothian is a wide moorland expanse roamed by wolves and colourful, fast-moving peasants.)

Ms. Boyle cared for her mother until the elder Boyle's passing in 2007 at the age of 91; her father passed away 10 years before. Living alone, Susan attends church each weekend and it was there that her singing talent developed, and where her late mother encouraged her to sing, but Boyle had reportedly stopped singing and did not know how she would do on that Saturday night she shocked the World.

Susan's life has not been one without pain. Sadly, she was starved of oxygen at birth and has a learning disability because of the accident. Ms. Boyle says she was abused and teased by classmates, and reportedly the scars of their comments remain to this day.

Susan Boyle's stirring song was as much a testimate to the power of the human sprit and a form of grieving as it was a display of talent. Susan wanted to make her mom smile, but in doing so made mothers all over the world smile.

As modern television, she doesn't make sense. Boyle is hearty about her snacks, she has the slightly masculine bearing of the long-term single lady and yet the Nation likes her - it may even love her (in the multimedia sense of that word) and Boyle not only seems quite content with herself, but actually has a remarkable talent of the sort few people associate with plump, cat-owning middle-aged ladies from West Lothian.

Nevertheless, Boyle has a voice - a big, serious, lyrical, swooping great voice, one that makes sense of her generous proportions as soon as she produces that sound: a sound as big as that needs serious lungs. And last Saturday night, she opened her mouth and sang in such a way that an audience full of the violently fashionable and young rose to its feet and cheered her. (The same audience which could only laugh uncomprehendingly on hearing the phrase: "I'm 47.") Now, that outpouring of admiration may be an indication that desperately shallow people are quite fickle, but I'd like to think it's about something slightly less repellent. I'd like to think it's about human beings occasionally being able to scrape together some kind of fellow-feeling for each other.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (1 Corinthians 12:9)

Our God gives a favor bestowed and generous gift to people who are totally undeserving and unworthy. It is God's favor, God's goodness, it starts at salvation and it goes right on forever because it tells us in Ephesians that through the ages to come God will show the riches of His kindness in His grace toward us.

This grace is a dynamic force which God applies to us in everything we need to glorify him. We were saved by grace, as said in Ephesians 2 says, through faith, but it is God's grace that just initiates there and sustains all the way through all of eternity. Every benefit in life, every benefit in eternity is by God's grace. And this great redemptive aspect of grace comes only to those who know Jesus Christ. It is faith in Jesus Christ that brings us into God's uncommon grace, into God's special saving grace and eternal grace.

"He was full of grace." (John 1:14)

God has the ability to pour out enough grace so that it literally overflows you and always you will have all sufficiency for all the issues of life and an abundance of grace for every good deed.
You have all the grace available you need to believe. You have all the grace you need to remove your sin and apply the righteousness of Christ to you. You have all the necessary grace to understand the Word. You have all the necessary grace granted to you to apply the Word, to overcome temptation, to triumph over habitual sin.

You have all the grace necessary to endure suffering and disappointment and pain and sorrow. You have all the grace necessary to obey the Lord, all the grace required to serve Him effectively and powerfully, all the grace necessary to worship Him in truth and in spirit. When you became a believer, the floodgates of grace were open. Grace for everything is poured out on you and continues and will continue to do that.

God’s grace bestows upon those who are weak, unwanted. God has used Susan’s voice to show the world even an unwanted forgotten person can glorify him, how about you and I? Have we got talents? Yes, we have. The only matter is whether we are stepping out to the centre stage to glorify him. Remember,

“If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength” (Proverbs 24:10)