What Grace looks Like

Yesterday a close friend flew down and will be here for the last two weeks of our stay. She is six feet tall and model –like. Beautiful on the outside, but if possible, her spirit is even more beautiful.

She travels a lot. Because she is tall and also often has to get up on long flights she always reserves an aisle seat.

Yesterday when she got to her seat on the crowded flight there was a large man sitting there.

He looked at her.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t offer to move.

He didn’t apologize.

He was very…ungracious.

Now I think my friend truly has one facial expression, and that is one of grace.

She smiled at this guy with love and asked, “Where is your seat?”

He pointed back a row to a middle seat.

A middle seat with two men sitting on either side.

“Would you like to stay here and have me take your seat?” she asked.

“Yeah, I really would,” was his response.

So she did. She squeezed in-between the guys, taking the middle seat like someone trying to fit into too-small jeans.

That was it.

REALLY?? REALLY??

If it had been me I might have grudgingly remembered “As you do it to the least of these you do it to me…”

Consequently I might have taken the crummy seat with an exasperated, I-can’t-believe-you’re-such-a-jerk air.

At t the very least I would have given the guy what John calls “the glare”.

But here’s the thing…As my friend told this story it wasn’t with anger, or frustration or self-righteousness. At all!

Instead she told about how great the guys were that she ended up sitting between.

How they all got up and went to the bathroom as a team…

That’s what grace looks like.

The guy in her seat gave her less than nothing.

She gave him what he didn’t deserve.

Now that might not seem like a big deal, but to me it’s the small glimpses of grace that make a huge impact on me because they’re so…inconvenient.

The opportunities are so "every day."

When we think about grace we usually think of Jesus’ death on the cross in our place. Dramatic. Humanly impossible.

But I wonder about the everyday pictures Jesus gave his disciples of what grace looks like.

When standing in line at the grocery store.

In a crowded parking lot.

When someone took His seat.

I asked my friend what went through her mind on the plane. She said she had prayed that morning that God would give her an opportunity to show kindness to someone. And this guy seemed to be Hi s answer.

I read a quote this morning. Dorotheos of Gaza, a 6^th century teacher wrote “…there is no way to move toward God without drawing closer to people, and no way to approach other people without coming nearer to God.”

I think in that moment on the plane my friend did both.