Remember To Gift This One Thing to Every Relationship Today

It was a headline moment. I actually had people over for a homemade dinner, with the table dusted (yes, I mean that) and set all pretty. I made chicken tetrazzini, with homemade white sauce and sautéed mushrooms, which is a lot fancier than Little Caesar’s.

The meal tasted good, everything went well, and the company was marvelous.

The next day I discovered the chicken in the refrigerator.

I wondered if you meant to leave it out or if it was a mistake, said my sister-in-law.

Well, I was actually so prepared that I had cooked and cut up the chicken ahead of time, because I’m amazing.

Just not amazing enough to remember to include the chicken IN the tetrazzini.

Like that sad bowl of chicken sitting all forlorn in the fridge, there is one ingredient often missing from my relationships.

Grace.

We can get out of bed and live without grace in the recipe of our day, but no relationship is good and satisfying without it.

Grace is a mom holding back a scalding lecture and choosing to smile love at him –when she discovers her son forgot the huge, homemade cold lunch in his car and ate hot lunch instead. Smiling with grace at the boy as she dumps the food in the garbage because it sat in a hot car all day.

It’s how a tired wife reacts on a Friday night when her husband says, I think I need to go to this event. And she not only doesn’t whine about him leaving but dons shoes and goes with him instead. *yawn*

Grace costs something in the moment.

And then it gives joy. To everybody.

Don’t accidentally leave it out.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV)