Grace is the only air not toxic to humans. – Ann Voskamp
You breathe in a lot of things during the day. Hurtful words. Not being asked to join your co-workers for lunch. Tragic stories, some that hit closer to home than others. A loved one forgetting an important date.
It’s hard to breathe in that atmosphere. It’s toxic, carbon monoxide in the making. You’ll perish if you stay too long.
Don’t stay indefinitely. This planet with its poisonous atmosphere is not your home. You aren’t supposed to linger here. This place isn’t a vacation spot. It’s the point plastered with the sign “abandon hope, all you who enter.”
It is a place, however, you must enter. As a grace-giver and truth-speaker, you must visit. You are on a salvage mission. You have the words of life. You have the oxygen.
Take it with you. Bring grace and hope to those marooned here. Offer them a way out, then show them the way. They’re lost and can’t find their way no matter how many kind words you proffer. You must actually do something, not merely say something.
Give them your emergency oxygen. Breathe for them. Hold their hand when the bottom slips out yet again. Weep and rejoice with them. Carry them on your back if you must.
Enter the atmosphere and lead out as many as you can. Give them grace. Give them Jesus.
Image: Chris Frank (Creative Commons)