Grace Happens...or it should

“What’s so amazing about grace?”  Author Philip Yancey posed the question in his book of the same title.  Truthfully?  I find grace most amazing when it is extended to me.

Flying over long distances in crowded, cramped aircraft, I appreciate the grace moments when quite unexpectedly I have been upgraded to a spacious “Business Class” seat, or been offered a seat exchange so a nice man can sit with his lovely wife which moves them both to “Coach” and me to comfort,  and also when we had our request in Amsterdam for leg room for my very tall husband on our flight back to the US answered by seats, not in the emergency row, but in the “First Class” cabin.  Unexpected grace.

I also see grace in the colors and artistic designs and attention to detail my Father used when He created the world.  As we have recently discovered more and more, the universe is a big place with billions of stars and unknown galaxies ablaze with glory and light and color, awesome in their splendor!  Until the moment they were “discovered”, only God and His angels had seen the beauty of His creation. Yet, He created this earth with all of its wonders and hues to share with us!

 As I sat on a strip of sandy beach between a river and the Atlantic Ocean, watching the small white and black bird hover six feet above the river before suddenly darting down to dip its beak into the sun dappled water, its tail slightly bent up in a manner I had never seen before, then darting back up to its observation position, I marveled at a creation so precise that even through brightly reflected water, it could still see its food from such a distance!  Moreover, I marveled at the grace allowed to me; having the opportunity to see the rainbow sherbet sky as the sun set beyond the bird, hearing the gentle wash of waves rushing to the beach behind me, feeling the cooling breeze touch my face…that the Creator of all that is painted this for me to enjoy...unexplainable grace.

When I am tired and grouchy and my family loves me anyway…grace.  When I am down and discouraged and God sends a little child to touch my heart, or a grateful person to warm my soul, showing me His plan and purpose for this moment…grace.  When I leave home, flying out of the country when so many assignments are not yet completed, but they need to be before I return, and my grown daughter takes the burden on as though all the responsibility is with her and her heart is weighed down by concerns she may let me or Point Hope’s children down and her family (perhaps begrudgingly) allows her to work too many hours in a day…grace abounds.  When this same daughter is discouraged and her sister assures her she is doing a great job and that their mother is very proud of her, that her work is more than acceptable, indeed, that it is appreciated more than words can express and any other thoughts are just lies Satan is trying to sell…amazing grace.

It is always grace moments and their memories that sustain me when “ungrace” (to quote Mr. Yancey) happens.  The woman who is ungrateful and rude because she doesn’t receive immediate attention at our office when Point Hope is trying our best to pay her six children’s school fees, but there is a protocol to follow…ungrace.  The woman who used the money Point Hope gave her to pay for her disabled son’s school, only for us to find she left him at home and paid for her healthy daughter’s tuition, then refused to produce a receipt and instead accused us of stealing money from her…ungrace.  A car I allowed to merge in ahead of me on the freeway later cut me off and wouldn’t allow me to change lanes…ungrace.  When I jump to conclusions and judge a situation and the people involved without seeing them through God’s eyes…ugly ungrace. When a small child’s dress is hanging to her waist and left tied there as she tries to pull a portion of the material up to cover her bare chest and all it will take is two minutes and a safety pin to run the cloth through the dress loops, tie a bow and “presto!” she is fully dressed and can run and play, but the safety pin wasn’t produced until pressured and the child is berated for wearing such a garment in the first place…unconceivable ungrace. 

So, what is so amazing about grace…it is that it so often comes when we deserve it least; in fact, we never deserve true grace. We live our lives struggling to forgive others while demanding that we be forgiven and granted grace; we are in the middle of an ungrateful, ungracious, ungraced world with which we often side, at the same time we are working to prove we can be worthy of His grace.  That’s the beauty of God, we can never be worthy, but He wants to grant His grace anyway.  As Yancy says, “...grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.” We get what we don’t deserve.  We don’t get what we do deserve.  That’s God. 

So when it is my turn to dispense some grace, I shouldn’t be so stingy.  There is not only so much grace to go around that if I use it all today there will be none for tomorrow!  I should remember, as C.S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”  I need to be a grace extender.  To offer unexpected words of encouragement, to share what I have with someone who doesn’t, to thank the people who bless me, to seek to serve.  Because there is not just one most amazing thing about grace, there is an amazing God who created grace; I live in His grace daily.  Others who don’t know Him should see His grace reflected in me and they should be running to Him, not running away from Him because of me and an ungrace attitude. 

THE BRAVE LITTLE DIRECTOR

One, two, three…four, five…six, seven…eight…does anyone remember The Brave Little Tailor?  He slew seven flies with one blow and the story grew beyond imagination until he was credited with slaying seven grown men?  Well, I am no tailor, but I did slay three tiny little mosquitoes last night and one more this morning!  Of course, the last one was well satisfied and replete with my blood and as I mentioned, I  counted eight welts on myself—how many “bites” can one mosquito take before they blow themselves up?

No worries, a refreshing shower and I will go forth and do great things!  One, two, three…minutes go by and the slow trickle of cold water stops completely and I hope I got the last of the shampoo out of my hair.  I do have electricity, however, so I plugged in my stateside phone to charge for the day…just in case my luck holds and I run out of minutes (again) on the cell phone we purchased here in Ghana.   Am I crazy, you ask? Am I not concerned the phone will self-destruct with the power surge sure to occur in the course of the outlet blowing out (reminiscent of a certain friend’s hairdryer on the last trip)?  Ah-hah!  Need you have further evidence?  I have a hope that springs eternal!

It is not so difficult to have this hope.  The inner joy reflected in bright smiles amidst hardship I see every day around me here at the camp, in the streets, everywhere, it is contagious and uplifting.  So when I go downstairs and ask if the entire hotel is out of water or if it is just my room and I am told they just started the pump for the water, but they are very sorry I wasn’t able to finish my shower, Patience is so sincere as she informs me with a very sweet smile.  Just as sincerely sorry as she is about the fact that after they sprayed my room for mosquitoes yesterday, they left the windows open to “air it out”, not considering they were also allowing mosquitoes in—aha, this explains the swarm I found when I arrived back yesterday evening.

Mr. Chris delivered his lecture to the hotel reception about proper protocol with guests and how they shouldn’t wait to pump the water until after it runs dry and no, do not open windows when the mosquitoes are breeding in the grass just outside the windows, and we drive back out to the camp.  First order of business for the day was teaching volunteer Amy how to batik—designing patterns and dying cloth.   The Sierra Leonean and Liberian women Point Hope has trained in this skill take her under their wing and I start documenting via photograph when I feel a sharp pain in my left palm.  Has the camera pinched me?  No, some unknown relative of a flattened mosquito or spider has taken its revenge and the welt is immediate and growing; perhaps also related to the monster that just left a red mark on my right shin which is now grown to almost the size of a dime in the last 5 minutes.  But I hardly notice because Amy is as fascinated by this craft and as charmed by the ladies as I am and a couple of hours fly away for both of us. 

Amy went to help at the clinic, she is a pre-med student, and I stayed to take more pictures as the material for tooth fairy pillows is stamped and dyed.  (See http://www.sorrisidecor.com/ and look for the Buduburam pillow!) In between trips to a fantastic, newly constructed computer lab training center, the maternity ward, the batik center and the PointHope Ghana office, the rest of the day passed as quickly as the first half. On to dinner with friends to have Octopus in Fried Rice at an infamous hotel where I was stuck in the loo for over 45 minutes (the lock hasn’t been fixed, by the way—just removed, so I had to hold the stall door closed as I completed my business), then set up a taxi for a trip into Accra tomorrow (where I will meet Chris at the courthouse while he tries yet again to get a travel visa for a recently adopted child whose parents await him in the U.S.) and home-again-home-again jiggity-jig!

I entered my room which smelled of insect repellant spray, saw no mosquitoes and turned on the air conditioner, no problem. I went into the washroom and pulled up the sink faucet handle to dispense water, problem.  No water.  I went back downstairs and asked how long it takes to pump water to the second floor, as they had started pumping this morning.  The nice young man behind the counter said he would check.  In no time at all he called my room, “The pump is on, the water should reach your room shortly.”  I asked if he were sure, because they had told me the same thing this morning.  He said “the water has made it to some of the hotel, so it should reach your room soon.”  I thanked him, hung up the phone and swatted a mosquito.  It kind of hurt the bug bite on my left palm, but I’ll get through it.

Am I insane?  Nope!  Because the air conditioner does work, the refrigerator is chilling my bottled water, I do have windows that close (most of the way), my belly is full and I will only be here a few weeks.  There are children and their families at the settlement and in the homes between the hotel and the settlement and beyond who do not have cool air, running water or refrigerated bottled water, no windows or bug spray to keep the mosquitoes at bay (many don’t have mosquito nets to sleep under, either), scant food supplies and they have nowhere else to go, they are never done “roughing it.”  Yet I see trust, joy, and the love of God in them.   They inspire me.  I want to be a part of the plan God has for them to become self-sufficient, educated, healthy, and moving confidently into their future.  Yes, there are children who need help elsewhere in the world, even in the U.S.  I’m hearing His plan there also and will be working toward the goals He has for us.  But at this very moment?  As my mother used to say, “bloom where you are planted” and right now I’m transplanted in blooming Ghana.

Oh wait…nine…the itch in my left index finger’s knuckle tells me I messed up the count…ten, eleven, twelve…those are definitely from the batik zone, thirteen… If you hear a faucet dripping, it’s not mine, there’s still no water.  Thing is…I know I’m blessed!