Lexington, KY - Taking a morning walk along Market Street by Gratz Park I met an old guy carrying a plastic bag of grapes. He stopped me and asked, "Do you like grapes with seeds?" I told him I didn't. He then explained he bought them believing them to be seedless, and he hated for them to go to waste. I suggested that if he walked on down Market, he would surely meet someone who wanted the grapes. He said that might be so, then added, laughing, that if the grapes were instead a bottle of wine, he would have no trouble at all.
I'm still reflecting on that meeting. For one thing, on the ease with which we fell into conversation. Another is that the graceful thing would have been to accept the grapes. I could have carried the fruit back to the church office and shared it with others. I missed an opportunity to receive graciously and then to give graciously -
with grace. Grace is a good policy.
Not long before the Market Street meeting I had had a more common experience. Outside a drugstore I made eye contact with a homeless man and knew immediately I was chosen. He said he was on his way to Kroger and needed a dollar. I gave him two or three and went into the drugstore. As I left he was at the checkout line with a DVD. My first reaction was, Aha. And then, smiling at myself, I remembered we do not live by bread alone.
But back to the man with the grapes and the way we began talking though we were strangers. After my last birthday I make no jokes - I am one of the old guys. There are some advantages to being in this company. You don't have to do heavy lifting. You get to take naps. There is fellowship among old guys. We speak to each other in passing, whether we are acquainted or not. It's as if we're survivors, and I guess we are. Something like veterans of old wars bonded by shared experience.
A lot of old guys were in old wars -
WWII, Korea. Last July 4, my wife and I had breakfast at Cracker Barrel. An old soldier came in and sat by himself at a nearby table, probably on his way to a reunion or a parade. He was dressed in the olive drab of the '40s and '50s. He had been a master sergeant, and the medals on his chest and the hash marks on his left sleeve showed he had spent many years in the service.
His shoulder patch belonged to the Second Infantry Division. In WWII that unit saw its first combat at Omaha Beach. They fought across Europe until they met the Russians coming the other way in Czechoslovakia. Five years later when American and South Korean troops faced annihilation in Korea, the Second Division entered the war. They fought up the Korean peninsula to the Manchurian border. They lost 7,000 men.
As the old soldier finished eating, the waitress told him his bill had been paid, and as he left someone said thank you. It was the least one could do.
When I was a kid, playing soldier, the sergeant's division was fighting; when I was in the university and training for war, they were fighting again. Because of now-old guys, some much older than I, and many who didn't make old age, I never had to shoot at anyone or be shot at.
Grace is defined by the perfect and underserved love of God for humankind. It is reflected in our best moments when we are kind and generous and self-giving for no reason except that it is a good thing to do. And there is grace both in the giving and the receiving.
I'm grateful for all my years, and for big and little graces along the way, for chances to give and to receive, and most of all for the grace that will see us safely home.