Practicing (and practicing) Grace

From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. John 1:16

The other day, I was sitting down at the kitchen table when, out the window, I noticed a woman on the sidewalk turn and scold the preteen boy following her. “Don’t!” Looking closer, I noticed that he had just picked a stalk from one of the daylilies in my yard. Unfazed, he stepped onto the walk up to the house so that he could reach the daisies and picked one of those. As he walked away I saw that he was also holding a stem of red bee balm.

In that moment as they continued down the street, I had two thoughts. First, that he must have liked my flowers. This gave me pleasure as I’ve put many hours into turning my front yard (previously grass) into a garden. It’s still a work in progress, but I like how it’s looking and I want passersby to enjoy it. My second thought was on the order of “How dare he?!” Not so much, how dare he pick some flowers as how dare he pull out the entire stalk of daylilies. (If you’re not a gardener, let me explain. Each daylily blooms for only one day, but each stalk has at least a week’s worth of buds on it. When he picked the stalk, he removed more than the day’s flowers, but a few days’ worth of beauty.)

I didn’t stay in that place, didn’t dwell on it, just when about my business. But I had occasion to remember this feeling that evening. You see, in July and August, I sometimes go through the yard and snap off that day’s daylilies. Since they'll be spent by morning, I take them indoors to add color and fragrance to my evening. I have about ten varieties, so it can be quite a “bouquet” on the tray. Only this evening, as I carefully snapped off the flowers, I wasn’t careful enough, and at two different plants, I snapped off hands of buds. Oh! the tragedy!

And in those moments, I remembered the boy and how incensed I’d been at his carelessness. I remembered when Jay had picked flowers for me as a child, not always as I would have liked; and how I (thankfully) had practiced grace and thanked him with a big smile.

I thought of how this boy might have given his mother the flowers when they returned home and hoped that if he did, she too would smile and just say thank you.

Oh, God, thank you for the grace you show me in accepting me as I am, my gifts, and my shortcomings. Help me as I keep practicing grace. Maybe, someday, I’ll be able to skip the part about being offended, and just love the person, like you do. Amen.