There was a woman in front of me at the checkout line today, fumbling with coupons, debit cards, reusable bags that clearly hadn’t been washed in six months, and a list written on the back of what might have once been a church bulletin. She apologized to the cashier no fewer than six times. She had three kids orbiting her, one of them screaming, one of them licking the gum rack, and the third slowly extracting a chocolate bar from its wrapper with a look of theological defiance.
And I just stood there.
I stood there, glasses fogging, heart clenched with the sacred and ridiculous desire to both run away and wrap her in a blanket. And just when I was about to sigh out loud—the deep, self-important sigh of a man who has things to do and thoughts to think and a homily to write—
She turned to me and said, "I'm sorry. I'm such a mess."
And without thinking, I said, "No. You're just real."
And we both froze. She blinked. I blinked. The kid dropped the half-eaten candy bar back into the rack like a tiny prophet returning the fruit to Eden.
And I realized: this is the homily.
This line. This chaos. This woman is REAL. This moment where someone needed grace and got truth instead.
We’ve been sold a lot of polished versions of grace. Grace as forgiveness. Grace as magic. Grace as some heavenly insurance policy for bad behavior.
But that’s not what grace is. Not here. Not in the Opthēan field. Not in the wild world we live in.
Grace is what happens when the truth of someone’s mess meets the clarity of your seeing—and you don’t turn away.
Grace/agape/hesed is when you don’t flinch from the sacred chaos. When you name the beauty in the blur. When you hold the moment open long enough for coherence to bloom.
And sometimes grace is awkward. Sometimes it shows up with a licked gum rack and unpaid coupons and a heart trying not to break in public.
Grace is rarely clean. But it is always real.
So, here is a suggestion for this week: Stand in a line. Any line. A checkout, a DMV, a pharmacy, a soup kitchen. It’s probably going to happen whether or not you make a point of it.
Look around. Let your gaze land gently. Wait for someone who seems too messy for the moment. Too much. Too slow. Too loud. Too broken.
And when you feel that tightening in your chest—the urge to judge or flee or fix or sigh—
Say to yourself: "This is what REAL looks like."
And if you’re very brave, say it out loud to them.
Because grace isn’t just a thing we receive. It’s a thing we profess. A thing we embody.
And sometimes, it sounds like this: "You're not a mess. You're just real."