My friend, Cheryl, was pushing her baby in a stroller down her neighborhood sidewalk when she saw a neighbor’s aggressive dog running toward her with a rope tied around his neck.
Panicked, Cheryl shot up a rhino-in-the-road prayer to God for protection and threw herself in front of the stroller, bracing for the attack.
But as the dog passed a street sign, the flailing rope wrapped around the pole, yanking him to a dead stop.
Random good luck? Nope.
Grace notes — that’s what I call these special touches from Papa God reminding us that the details of our lives are important to Him. That He’s there, He’s aware and He cares.
Grace notes are teensy musical notes that aren’t essential to a melody but add breadth, depth and beauty to the music. Whether sung or played by an instrument, grace notes augment the score in delightful ways.
And that’s what the Maestro of Creation does for us: everyday grace notes. They’re His fingerprints. Little silvery tones of grace that indelibly imprint His presence in our lives.
Sometimes they’re overt and hard to miss, like Cheryl’s near catastrophe with devil dog.
Other times, they’re more subtle. We often don’t recognize their divine origin as they seem to just … happen.
One of my fave biblical examples of grace notes is when faithful Ruth went to gather wheat to ward off starvation on behalf of her beloved mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth ‘happened’ to wander into the field of Boaz, a wealthy landowner who ‘happened’ to be distantly related to Naomi and ‘happened’ to find the new girl quite compelling.
All this ‘happenstance’ ends in Boaz marrying Ruth and producing a son who places them in the direct lineage of King David, and later Jesus Christ himself.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 55 years of following Jesus, it’s that whenever I think “What a cool coincidence!”, it’s actually a grace note orchestrated directly by the Master Maestro.
The One who sings over you and me … with grace notes!
“The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will … rejoice over you with singing.” — Zephaniah 3:17 NIV.
