Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

Today, I am reflecting on grace, a simple word, and really a simple state of being, although sometimes it takes a lifetime to find it. Sadly, I imagine some never realize when it has been found.

In some seasons it is all around me, fluttering like a Monarch butterfly, curling over my toes and pulling me toward it like a wave breaking on the sand, a strong wind which seems powerful enough to bend me to its will, yet does not bend me.

This is one of those seasons for me. How many of us get up every day with excitement and wonder because we are getting to do precisely what we feel called to do in precisely the place we want to do it? How many of us are surrounded by a team which really feels more like an extended family committed to a common goal? How many of us, many days, not all, feel more energized at the end of the day than at the beginning because it has simply been that good?

That is my life in this moment, my season of grace. I worked hard, but I can’t really say I caused it to happen or that I earned it. Many people work hard. I simply opened myself to grace and it found me. So that you know this is not a naive point of view,  there have been many seasons of my life in which grace has been much harder to find, seasons of loss and despair, seasons of scarcity and fear, seasons of longing when hope seemed a luxury for others. In those seasons, yes, even then, when I have stopped and looked for grace, it has usually found me, not in such abundance as now, but maybe in a letter from a distant friend, a phone call or a text from my sister who can psychically spot a low moment from a thousand miles, a kind word or small gesture from a stranger which made all the difference and cost the stranger very little in the grand scheme.

It was when I endured those low moments, and we all endure them, that I learned we all have the ability to become the grace others need to find in the world. We have the chance to be the kind strangers, psychic sisters, distant friends.

I am so thankful for my season of abundant grace, mostly because I know it is not guaranteed, that it will likely pass as most seasons do, and that it is a gift, not something of my making.

What’s your season like right now? Is there joy you would like to share or hardship we might help you to overcome…because that’s the thing about grace. The more we give away, the more we seem to find.