Author Archives: Karen Kallberg

About Karen Kallberg

Karen helped found the VOICE conference back in 1999 and has served on staff ever since, her primary role now being conference advisor and internship instructor. She and her husband Luke live in Saint Louis with their three children. When she's not brainstorming ways to improve the conference, she enjoys exploring the city, trying local restaurants, singing with her family, reading books by Tim Keller, and spending quality time with family and friends.

An Intrusion of Grace

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Last summer, one of the VOICE students returned to Oklahoma City with us. Since Chris is an American citizen, his father wanted him to finish high school in the US. I recommended Christian Heritage Academy, a good private school in town with an exchange program (headed by my friend Audra). It slipped my mind, however, that Chris would need a place to stay or a way to get to school…

…until his parents came to Oklahoma City to help him get settled. That was when Luke and I realized that Chris needed a host family.

Neither of us were ready for parenting– much less teen parenting. We had guarded our first year of marriage carefully, but with our anniversary around the corner, we wondered if this was God’s next step for us.

After talking seriously about it, we told his parents that we’d pray about it. I’ll never forget the look of relief in their eyes as they shared how they had gotten up at 4:30 that morning to pray that we might take Chris into our home.

That was nine months ago. Serving God this year has meant taking Chris to school, cooking for three, cutting his hair, tutoring him in Shakespeare and grammar, picking him up after football practice, helping him get his motorcycle license, and talking through important life issues.

An intrusion to our lives? Yes, but it’s been an intrusion of grace as we’ve been learning to let God use us as a channel of His irrational, extravagant love.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (I John 4:10-11)

like?

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One of the questions that our motto brings up is why we use the word “like.” “God is real– why live as if He’s real?”

We racked our brains for other ideas, but nothing else seemed to convey the all-important concept that our lives should reflect the reality of Christ.

So we looked up the word “like” in the dictionary. Among its many colloquial definitions (which included “as if”) was the basic definition “having the same characteristics; similar; equal.” That’s it. As Christians, the way we live should proclaim to the world that GOD IS REAL! That is how we should live.

So until one of you comes up with a better way to convey this motto, we will embrace the word “like.”

Now go… live like God is real.