Grace for granted

A few days ago I shared here about a friend I lost to the cold hands of death.

Since then, I have seen so many people write about him, about the kind of person he was, the things he did and the lives he touched. I have also seen people talk about how God has given us the grace to see another day. How tomorrow is not promised. How we should live differently because we don’t know when our own day will come.

I totally understand why we say these things.

Death has a way of reminding us of what we so easily forget when everything is going well.

For a moment, we become more intentional. We tell ourselves that we will love better. We will forgive. We will stop holding on to things that don’t matter. We will make that call. We will visit that person. We will stop doing the things we know are wrong. We will appreciate the people we have while we still have them.

And then the next day comes.

And somehow, we go back.

We pick up the same habits. We return to the same anger, the same bitterness, the same dishonesty, the same things we already know we should let go of. We go back to treating people carelessly. We go back to postponing the things that matter. We go back to living as though we are guaranteed another tomorrow.

I guess that’s one of the strangest things about us as human beings. We can cry about grace today and take it for granted tomorrow.

We can stand at a funeral and say, “Life is short,” and then spend the next day living as though we have all the time in the world.

We can say, “God has given me another day,” and then waste that very day doing things that don’t honour the gift we have just acknowledged.

If only we could see that grace isn’t only the fact that we woke up this morning… But that grace is also the opportunity to do something different with the morning we have been given.

Author: Emaistace

wife, mom, sister, daughter, aunty, friend. writing my everyday thoughts as they pop up. View all posts by Emaistace