His eyes were beautiful – blue and clear, set in a sun-browned face so lined and leathered that it spoke to the state of his life – homeless – and the length of time it had been so.
But his eyes were luminous.
I know because I looked him directly in those eyes when I rolled down my window and gave him a few dollars. When I did, he gave me the gift of a smile that rose up from some sweet spot inside him and came to rest in his eyes. I’m reading a lot into those few seconds, I know. It was that kind of moment.
As I drove away, I had a pious thought that tries to pass itself off as gratitude but is actually more about keeping myself feeling secure within the confines of my safely-mortgaged lives.
“There but for the grace…”
The thought turned sour before I finished the phrase.
Oh, really? Like God’s grace doesn’t extend to that man with the smile in his eyes? Or to the frazzled woman standing at the bus stop wearing a pair of worn-to-the-pavement shoes? Or the 24 children who will die of hunger around the world in the two minutes it takes to read what I’ve written? What about the bright young people who should have brilliant futures ahead of them but will nevertheless die of cancer or addiction or suicide or texting-while-driving? God doesn’t provide grace for those people?
The God I believe in provides grace for everyone. And when I can drive away from a homeless man on the street and think somehow that God’s grace protects me from a fate like his, I wonder if I am living not in a state of grace but in a state of arrogance.
I do not believe God showers grace only on those of us who pray fervently enough or worship in the right church or read the right holy literature. I don’t know why some of us seem blessed and some of us have lives that look like a train wreck from hell. But I believe grace rains down on all of us.
Maybe some of us turn our backs on that grace.
Maybe some of us take the grace that’s available to us and use it to build walls that separate us from them.
Maybe some of us do the best we can to grow into that grace, knowing that it’s okay if we never quite get it right.
Maybe for some people, grace shows up as having the humility to ask for handouts on the street. And to do so with clear blue eyes that smile a blessing on someone with plenty, who might then be lifted out of her self-absorption long enough to remember that she does not have a corner on God’s grace.
Wonderful reflection.