An Immersion of Grace

When trouble is breathing down your neck, heartbreaking trouble, why is it that somehow, for no logical reason, the clouds will break and hope will rise?

It happened to me here in my room a moment ago. Happened to me. It was unexpected, even uninvited, but it came anyway, without knocking. It is fleeting, like when Hank Williams sang: “I Saw the Light,” I imagine it came and went suddenly. You can’t corral it. It has a life of its own. “It will be what it will be.” It happened to Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had hit bottom. He was lying in his hospital bed drying out when light first broke in on him. A very smart and cagey man who could never get his mind around it.

I am wondering about it now because it seems so dark outside. Even the future feels closed-off. The last thing I expected was an immersion of grace.

Whatever the setting or situation---however tight---grace muscles in. Sometimes it comes quietly like the warmth of the sun. Other times like the sudden chill of a November morning.