“Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.” – Pope Francis
In the Thornton Wilder play, The Skin of Our Teeth, when the main character George Antrobus is asked what he has lost, he says “the desire to begin again,” noting that it’s the most important thing in life. Each day and every day, we have the opportunity to begin again.
Oftentimes, we allow a few “bad” moments to take our entire day or even week hostage. When we honestly reflect on those days, we realize that there was so much more good in them, but we let the bad trump the good.
By the end of Friday, I had a series of encounters with people demanding me to do what they wanted because it was the most important thing ever. And instead of letting it roll off my back, I let it get to me. 24 hours, a seven mile run and the gift of grace put the “world” back into proper order. And despite the critics, I am going to begin again.
A few definitions of grace include “beauty of form” and “unmerited favor of God.” It’s both really – God giving you the ease and strength to maintain your beauty of form when you don’t feel like it at all.
Grace is the ability to be quiet instead of reacting with our first selfish thought. To choose light over dark. To edify rather than criticize. To let others do what they do and not let it sway your resolve. To let go of the need to be right. It’s a real change of heart that allows us to choose compassion, empathy and love when it’s counterintuitive. It’s aligning our thoughts and heart with our actions. And in order to do all of this, we need the gift of grace and the peace that passes all understanding to intervene to make the seemingly impossible, possible.
Grace comes again to save the day.