Praying for a Little Grace

I have a friend who has at least three jobs...and one of them happens to be a school bus driver.

If you want your child to be on a safe bus, a good bus, this is the one. Of course, you may  have to move so your child can be on her route,  but hey, anything for the kids, right?

Anyway, some years back, she was told a few weeks before school was to start that her route was changing. In fact, a road was being added to her route, which would make the route start one half hour earlier. She was already getting up at 5:00 a.m. The road was not a county road, in other words, no county school bus was supposed to even be on that road, much less running a route.

But (and I bet you never saw this coming) someone with some 'pull' said do it anyway, and she was told, 'do it anyway.'

She fussed and fumed. Ranted and raged. Pouted and pleaded.

She had to do the route.

That morning, she was mad as an old wet hen. She told God in no uncertain terms this wasn't only not fair, it wasn't right! She probably called down rain or something else on the politicians who were breaking the rules and the family who was insisting it be done.

Toward the end, as she neared that road, she began to pray, "Well, Lord, it looks like I have to do this. I don't need to take it out on the boy (whom she had heard was a real brat, and I wonder why), so what I'm asking for now is not fairness, but a little grace. Please give me a little grace to get through this without acting any way but the way You would act."

Much to her surprise, before she got to the boy's house to pick him up, she came upon a house with a woman and a little girl standing out front. She said the little girl was the cutest thing you ever saw. She was petite with long dark hair, and a sweet dress, and tiny little Mary Jane's on her feet. She looked to be about five years old.

My friend stopped the bus and opened the doors. She saw the tiny backpack and excited look on the child's face. "Well, hello!" my friend said. "And what is your name?"

The little girl looked her square in the eye and said, "I am Grace."

Well, well.

My friend said she was trying not to start squalling right there in front of everybody, when the mother approached with tears in her eyes. "You don't know what this means to me," she said. "I start a new job today, one that I've needed for months. I didn't have any way to get Grace to school at the right time. I prayed and prayed that God would send someone to help me, and the next week I read in the paper the bus was coming out this way. Thank you so much!"

The child Grace became, and still is, a very important part in my friend's life. She has watched this child grow into a beautiful young woman, full of the Lord's grace. And  my friend help teach her about that grace.

You see, God takes what man means for evil - breaking the laws to self satisfy, for instance - and turns it into something  marvelous for His glory.

Amazing Grace. We all need to pray for a little of it, every day, I'd say.