3 Weeks of Grace Part #1: The Good Soil

I took a 19-day whirlwind adventure around a few parts of Asia recently. I can't say I was expecting a lot, but I was surprised by Grace... (As usual, I hear you say).

It would be ten years this August since I last lived in Singapore. And of course, it's only taken me the last ten years of being gone to realise I was lucky to have landed in good soil. And no, I don't mean blessed. I mean lucky.

Luck would have it that I landed in the good soil of a family that rallies around in times of need.
Luck would have it that the winds blew and the storms came, but somehow we are still standing and holding each other in gestures that may not quite suggest intimacy as much as simply the need to ensure each other's survival.

Luck would have it that I landed in the good soil of a circle of girls that still stick around, twelve years after our school days.
Luck would have it that we all landed in a school, way back in the beginning, that would churn us out ok--successful perhaps not by the world's standards, but by the abundance of health, laughter and the ties that bind us together through the years--and that the dramas of our lives pale drastically in comparison with so many of our contemporaries.

Luck would have it that I landed in the good soil of a "youth group" (which really isn't a "youth group" if you look at our ages, but we just don't know what other category we fit into) that had managed to somehow still stick together through the tumultuous years of church politics.
Luck would have it that each time I return, the landscape of that "youth group" changes drastically, yet somehow, the few remain faithful and committed to each other's ridiculousness as much as we were in the years that passed.

Don't get me wrong, I truly believe also, that I'm blessed. I'm just not convinced that landing in good soil was one of those blessings, as much as what often feels like random selection (luck, perhaps) because I did nothing to deserve better soil than my neighbour.

But Grace.

Grace, both in spite of, and because of, my unworthiness.
Grace that landed me in good soil.

Grace, from random selection
Now that, I might just be brave enough to receive.