I love being a greeter. It does my heart good to see people’s faces light up when they realize that someone sees them and acknowledges them. Especially in a world that ignores and teaches people to ignore anyone who isn’t “pretty” (as they define it).

It was a picturesque fall evening with the temperature just perfect. For me, that means just on the brisk side, cold enough to keep me alert and awake.

It was that magical time between sunset and night when there’s enough daylight to cast a golden glow over everything and give the landscape a dreamish and surreal quality.

I’m reminded how often I feel that I’m entitled to grace. Of course, that’s absurd. Grace by its very nature is undeserved, unmerited, and most certainly unentitled. And most often unexpected.

If I possess true humility, looking truthfully at who I am and who God is, then I must confess that anything good in my life is grace. I don’t deserve any of it.

I hope that I can be a dispenser of grace and give it away just as freely as I’ve received it. Sometimes, I’m better at it than others, but always I’m a little less grace-full and a little more selfish than I’d like to be.

Even the good that I do is grace, because God blesses my self-centered motives and my paltry offerings and multiplies what I do to bless so many more than I know.

The point is not that I’m a bad person. We’re all broken people whom Jesus is making whole again. The point is that God is still good all the time. Always.