On a whim…

Each of us lives with plans and demands on our time. They arrive with urgency and insistence, persuading us that what is scheduled is what is necessary. Even faith can become another obligation—something to be managed rather than received.

But grace does not usually arrive on schedule.

What if interruption is not a failure of discipline but a threshold? What if some of what we think we “need” to do matters less than what love quietly places in front of us?

I have been shaped by women who lived with this kind of attentiveness—Beth, whose presence continues to instruct me, and Lucy, whose goodness is a daily constant. Neither acted in order to be seen. They did what was right because it was right. I have had to reckon with my own temptation—often hidden even from myself—to hope that such goodness might be noticed or returned. That hope belongs to me. Their faithfulness does not depend on it.

Recently, I suggested to a group of friends that we do something for someone who goes out of their way to help us. There was no response. I let it be. When I returned home, I noticed snow had not been cleared where my children park their cars. So I cleared them.

That was all.

No larger gesture followed. No unseen heroics. Just the work immediately before me.

Faith does not always look expansive. Sometimes it is bounded, ordinary, and quiet. It does not perform well. It does not multiply itself to prove a point.

Still, it counts.

Grace is not measured by how much we do, but by whether we are willing to do what is ours to do—without applause, without enlargement, without pretending it was more than it was.