This Invitational LifeSample

Seeds of Grace and Joy

Recently, my son and his grandpa made a small wooden birdhouse together. They hammered and painted and had it just right before hanging it on a tree in our backyard. My son anxiously stared at that birdhouse, hoping to get a glimpse of its new tenants. A few weeks went by and no birds had shown up. Then he had an idea. We went to the store and bought a big bag of birdseed. As soon as we got home, he dragged that bag to the yard, tore it open, and stuck his little hands in deep. Then he started running around the yard, throwing seeds everywhere, and laughing like a lunatic.

I want to live my life like that—to be free to delight in the moment, scattering seeds of joy and grace everywhere I go. Sadly, some of us are afraid there might be an end to joy, a limit to grace. We become stingy with our happiness, keeping it to ourselves, refusing to spread it without exception. We end up rationing our energy, refusing to live as if there will always be enough. The truth is, you can’t run out of seeds of grace and joy.

You can’t run away from grace or run out of it; it’s everywhere you go. When you have seeds of grace, you can’t help but spread them around. So how do we do this? What does it look like when we’re at a coffee shop or in line at a bank? What do seeds of grace look like when we’re in a conversation with a neighbor and when we’re dropping our kids off at school?

The truth is, any situation we walk into has potential for eternal impact. All of humanity is in search of grace; we are all desperate for good news. As Christians, we can be conduits of grace. We have the good news in our grasp. And we get to toss seeds of grace to those who are hungry for it.

Looking for good is like digging for gold. We look for the good within a culture that is so cynical, so angry, and so judgmental that random acts of kindness are seen as out of the ordinary. There is a massive grace gap available for us to fill. We get to be a compelling force for grace, drawing out good and pointing people to what truly is good.

We become like treasure hunters, excitedly searching for the gold buried within the pain, the hope struggling to rise up from the ashes.