Why I Wrote These Stories
One cool, bright South Dakota morning my station wagon, loaded with plywood, began skidding down a winding, hill, sliding on late spring frost. I turned into the slide, as I always did on icy roads, but my wagon fishtailed the other way. Repeating the process gave the same results. I wasn't over-correcting - the problem was the load in the back.
My speed was increasing but if I hit the brakes I'd spin out of control. There were curves ahead I'd never make if I didn't slow down. And what if a car came from the opposite direction? Fear rose in my gut and I panicked. I heard myself shout, "God, help me!" Instantly, a clear thought, like a voice in my mind said, "Turn off the ignition." I did, and the compression slowed the car until I had it under control. (NB: This won't work on cars with power steering.) I drove to the bottom of the canyon, shaken but also thanking God all the way.
That was a clear gift of grace if I ever saw one. And in my seventy years there have been many. It's just that I didn't recognize most of them when they happened. In fact, it was only later, sometimes much later, that it would come to me. Then I would mutter to myself as Jacob did, "Surely God was in this place and I didn't know it."
Now retired, I look back over the years and realize that two prayers come to my lips most often. One is "I'm sorry;" the other is "Thank you." Frankly, the thank you's far out number the sorry's. It's just taken me a long time to see it.
Of course some gracious events lie beyond the reach of memory. The day each of us plunged into the world, wet with the salty fluid of our mothers' wombs, was one such moment. Being born, since it happens to us all, may not seem like an act of grace. But surely it is grace that lifts us from the cold, dark well of non-being into the warm light of existence. That none of us remember the event doesn't make it any less amazing, and without that gift, no others are possible.
I don't remember the sunny summer afternoon at the beach when I was one and a half. My brother and I were playing along the edge of the water as my father sat talking with friends. At some point, dad noticed that he could see my brother but not me. He stood, and to his horror, saw me floating face down in the water not far from shore. He covered the ground in a flash and yanked me out. I gasped, cried, and lived. If something hadn't distracted my father from his conversation (not an easy thing to do) it would have been too late.
The grace I have received over seventy years has been more than I either expected or deserved. In my mind, that's what grace is. God's love showing up when we least expect it, without regard to whether we deserve it or not. And it happens all the time.
This is why I began writing the accounts in this book - to remind myself and my readers that good things, signs of God's grace, do happen to real people. Every day we hear the bad news of violence, destruction and suffering. For some folks this deluge becomes the truth about life. The stories I tell here are my witness and my evidence for grace. They're written to counter the notion that, "Life's a bitch and then you die".
Don't mistake what I'm saying for some Pollyanna view of life. When I was eighteen, my older brother, Art, was killed mountain climbing. Thirteen years later, my wife's younger brother, Jim, drowned in a boating accident.
As often anyone, I ask God "Why?" when things go badly. But I also want to say "Thank You" when things go well. I try to live my life with faith in the power of God's love to heal, rebuild, renew, and save all of God's creation. I want to notice and celebrate every sign of that love at work – and remember that grace all the days of my life.
So here are fourteen stories about grace happening right in the middle of everyday life. In all of them I was at least an observer, if not a participant. There are no famous people in the stories and the events are not earth-shaking -- except for the people involved.
It is my hope that these stories – many of which first appeared in Episcopal newspapers in Washington, Idaho and South Dakota - will lift your spirit, and more importantly, bring to your mind moments of God's grace in your own life.