Grace and her BFF

Grace. I know her. She’s amazing. My first knowledge of her was my Aunt Grace. Mercy, she was a nifty lady! But as an adult, I have come to learn about God’s grace. Grace has a BFF named Mercy, and although they often travel hand-in-hand, sometimes it’s easy to get them confused.

When I was little, any time I heard the word “grace” at church, I thought of my Aunt Grace. Whenever Aunt Grace came to visit, she would take me to the store and tell me to pick out any treats I wanted. What?! That was a crazy surprise and certainly something I didn’t expect or deserve. That’s grace.

One time after we got our goods we ended up in a community that had a checkpoint to enter. When the guard asked what we were doing, Aunt Grace proudly stated we were site seeing, but to her dismay, the guard was rude to her and would not let us enter. As she turned the car around, she said “I wanted to tell that man to kiss my foot, but that’s not nice, and he might be having a bad day.”

At the time, I was most struck by the “kiss my foot” comment, because I knew I would have gotten in BIG trouble if I said that. But here’s the best part of the story. On the way back out, she stopped at the guard station again. I remember feeling kind of nervous, because he had been so snippy with her, and I didn’t think we should talk to him anymore. Though I don’t remember what she said to him, I do remember he laughed, and as we drove away she told me to always be kind, even when others aren’t kind to you. That’s mercy.

I think grace and mercy are hard concepts for people to understand, so when I get to heaven, it’s one of the things I really want to sit and talk about with God. But until that day, I’m going to try hard to remember to sprinkle grace and kindness even when I feel like telling someone to kiss my foot!