Everyone has bad days and good days. Have you ever gone into a restaurant, office or gas station and encountered an unhappy worker? Chances are, that employee is having a bad day. So how do you handle it? Do you get upset when he or she isn’t as courteous or responsive to you? Or do you extend grace by being extra kind and understanding?

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

Grace is a practice of my faith, but it is by no means exclusively religious. Grace is expansive and life affirming, experienced and practiced through all human relationships. Grace is something we do not deserve but receive in ways that are abundantly freeing. When we give someone grace who needs to be forgiven, we forgive them. When we offer grace to someone who can never pay us back, it is real.

Showing grace toward others is something we must diligently offer. Our direction should be focused on looking for those to whom we can emulate God’s great love.

Be a person, that not only is graceful in life’s moments of upset, but in addition, be the person who shows others what true grace is all about when they least deserve it.

Give grace. Bloom.

You are capable of adding more grace to your life today. Do not wait. If you are upset with someone who ‘did’ you wrong, make it right. It is never wrong to do what is right. Change the situation by opening your grace favors to others. Watch the freedom fly in your life and the lives of others as you practice grace.