Grace For Grace

I spent the better part of an hour Saturday, scraping double-sided tape up off a concrete floor. It was tape that is designed to keep carpets in place and was therefore not intended to come right back up off the floor. The carpets it was holding down were in a booth at the exhibition center and the whole idea was to keep the carpets down and immovable so patrons would not trip or slip. The intentions were good, but the consequences of the decision remained a big secret until time to pack everything up at the end of the day, after a herd of humans had pressed the tape to the floor like a steamroller squishing asphalt.

My connection to the whole deal was that my wife's employer had the booth and I was there to pick Kathy up. I was waiting in the car, listening to oldies, when the distress signal came. I went in and was soon on the floor scraping tape.

It was a good day because I didn't resent it. And I'm thankful to God for that. On not good days, I would have resented the interruption to my "schedule," resented having to help somebody that should have known better and, after all, you made this mess, you clean it up.

But God is good, and has made His goodness known to me and gave me the grace to lay hold of the grace to be of service to somebody else.

And that is no small thing.