Image via WikipediaThe children and I once looked at photos of the dead Dead Sea, and we read how the Jordan River streams into the sea and nothing flows out of the sea and the salt content rises and everything dies. I think of this. That fullness grows foul. Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies ... waters that have no life.


I turn my hand over, spread my fingers open. I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain ... again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless. A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ...

A Thursday morning, I flip pancakes and the phone rings. The youth pastor. I don’t have children old enough to even be in youth group. He wonders if I’m interested in serving with our youth group for a weekend on the streets of Toronto. I remember the streets of Toronto. My first panic attack was on those streets, city that choked me tight. I was then the age of many of the kids in youth I’d be chaperoning. Could I go back, live full on those same streets, now be full of His grace? Was this the way I might bless? And is any opportunity we are given to let the fullness of grace flow on, the opportunity we always should take? ... The call seems from God. I say yes. Yes!
This is my place, openhanded.

Who could have known how grace would fall and on whom? 

-One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, by Ann Voskamp