Hit by Grace!
A tattered urchin grins through broken teeth to a well-dressed gent. Grubby hands wishfully hold an outstretched hat. Almost unintelligible words add color to this scene.
Street meets sophistication, and poverty greets prosperity.
A surprising generosity quickly floods the gent's comfortable soul. Confronted by both the tormented and the terrible, this gasp of goodness refreshes his spirit as never before.
Unaccustomed as he was to receiving vagrants (and even more-so to still believing well of them), such a strangeness no longer hindered his goodwill to this chance encounter.
Freezing sea-water lapped piers on his left, and a seedy dockside pub fenced in his right; an icy setting for this warm exchange of grace about to take place. Near zero temperatures guaranteed that this dalliance would be brief.
Without reflection and with an uncommon charity the gent reaches into his trouser pocket, determined to give all that was there.
He neither checks his pocket's value nor filters its contents through his fingers. He simply hands it to the needy soul before him.
Tears now mount this chilled and worn face as he gazes into his palm's contents. Never before has the vagrant found such unrestrained generosity.
He was unaware of his unknown benefactor's sudden change in heart; the benefactor unaware that without accommodation again that night the vagrant was not to survive.
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)
God had wanted this encounter, but which man was truly hit by grace? Who was truly saved?
We are all equal candidates for grace. ~ Max Lucado
Today's Soul Snack:
"Creation is God's first missionary." ~ Max Lucado
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