Approached by Grace

by Sarah Van Diest

I was approached by grace, and humility sensed its presence. It rose in me and leaned forward desiring to walk on the path grace paved, the bridge it built, from me to another.

It was graciousness she showed me. I don’t know where it came from; welled up from her soul, I suppose. It’s a lovely thing to see, and something folks don’t just manufacture, at least not this brand of graciousness. Maybe my feeling of humility that followed was the result of it being pulled up from its seat of resting where it had nested in me. Grace offers its hand to humility and helps it stand up. And then they walk together.

I am beginning to think one cannot have right humility without this grace piece. To be humble, in part, means to recognize one’s limitations or weaknesses. It means to understand that the self is not the answer to all things and that there is more out there than what is present within. Knowing this leads us to an edge; a cliff of sorts, where the self ends; drops off into nothingness. Beyond this cliff there is more. There are others. There is out there that which is not within. But how to reach that which is beyond? I believe grace is that bridge. Grace is the connecting of one man’s cliff to another’s; and from my cliff to God.

Grace is the thing that makes being humble not a bad thing, not defined by lack and incompleteness, but instead a catalyst for the creation and realization of something greater than what was as connections form and the self extends to another. Once on the other side of the bridge, humility meets humility, because I do not believe grace can be extended by one who does not possess humility in the first place.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” 2 Cor. 12:9.