Sometimes enjoying the fruits of grace requires trust.
Over the break, I promised my son and I would work on reading. For a hard-of-hearing kid, learning to read is both challenging AND necessary. When he can read all by himself the directions for a school activity or captions on a movie, the world will be his to explore.
Of course, he got sick over break… twice. And time got away, and then I was nervous to battle with him on something he doesn’t want to do while it’s still technically a break. Yesterday, however, we finally sat down to work on some worksheets.
As we worked, I realized there a lot of #trust he has to place in those of us that say how important this is… it’s like the first day he put on his hearing aids, trusting us as he entered into a new world of un-garbled sound. He had to trust then and now that the road we are leading him down will be so full of grace. Even if the journey takes a lot of hard work along the way.
As we start a new year, many of us have made plans for improvement or a list of goals we want to achieve. It is impossible to fully recognize how much achieving those goals will open our world. And that may be exactly why starting them in the first place is so hard.
But we have to start. We have to do the work. Because there is grace at the end of the road.
Today, this is my prayer for all of us by Thomas Merton:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
What will you start today, even if it’s hard, to begin to walk towards the fruits of grace?
