Amazing Grace is one of my favorite hymns and somehow always makes me tear up. A revered guru, Ramana Maharshi once said that grace is always there but it’s up to the individual to receive it. Some come to the ocean of grace with small cups and others bring huge pails. But like the ever shining sun it doesn’t discriminate and falls generously on one and all.
When I look back at my life now, it’s very clear to me that God’s grace has saved me many a time from close calls, utter disgrace, and even death. Tasks that seemed impossible were rendered possible by His grace. Hopeless situations were turned around when I least expected it. Maybe not in the way I wanted it but in ways that He deemed right for me.
For the past decade or so my life has been a series of upheavals and trials that had the power to destroy me. Many a time I gave up, with no will to keep going on. Yet He sent me a small ray of hope every time I questioned His very existence. Something to encourage me. Something to tell me not to give up before the miracle. And sure enough the miracles came when I least expected it.
Yesterday as I waited in the lobby of a car dealership, peering vacantly through the tall glass windows into the parking lot, He sent me another sign. The song “Don’t Give Up…You’ve Got the Music in You” started playing and I smiled. My future looked uncertain, my life so different from what it was 10 years ago. I had no clue what I was doing or where I was going. But that song made me smile. It’s a song that was playing in my head when I woke up several years ago in what I thought was a turbulent time in my life. Little did I know that those trials were trivial compared to what lay ahead.
Those early trials though prepared me for what was to come. Surrendering to grace and giving up all pretenses that I had the power or the foresight to solve my problems, prepared me for the day when I truly was lost and had no clue what to do or where to seek help.
But the help came, the path opened up, because grace always found its way to me. I’ll leave you with these lines from the song that always struck a chord with me:
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come:
’tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.
Punctuate Life 