Grace
On Thanksgiving morning last year all was calm and quiet. No family present or coming. No one from my family, my husband’s family, or our family. This was new, and I felt lonely. But across the miles greeting me that morning was an email from a childhood friend—a blast from the past and a surprise.
Margaret and her four siblings lived on a farm next door to my grandparents whom we visited for two weeks each summer. Two weeks full of fun— feeding baby calves, playing hide-and-seek in the hay barn where we could move bales around to make secret spaces that were hard to find, celebrating her birthday, catching tadpoles.
We grew up. I stayed east of the Mississippi. She married a farmer in Kansas and taught school until her eyesight failed. Our ability to communicate diminished. Our friendship seemed like something from the past. And then last year she got a computer that allowed her to see email with large print. Suddenly we again could be actively in touch, sharing the dailyness of our lives and our families.
So it is her message that arrived first that morning and reached out to my loneliness. Who would have thought, all those years ago, that our lives would be intersecting when we were older than our parents then were? We couldn’t even have imagined being as old as we are now. What a surprise. What a gift. Grace.
Grace is unexpected, unmerited, life-giving goodness.
Queries:
When have you experienced grace?
What helps you notice it when it happens?
Prayer:
Reflect back over the past 24 hours. Notice the moments of grace—moments you especially appreciate, moments that glow as you remember them. Make this a regular practice.
For further reflection:
“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God . . .” (See Luke 17: 11-19).
“Bless the Lord, O my soul . . . who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy . . .” (See Psalm 103).