Giving the Love We Needed
1 Corinthians 15:10 — But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
It is amazing when you can return the favor.
I have someone in my life who I am so close to. She is a young grandmother, and I knew she was special the first time I watched her hold that baby. She bounced him gently, humming as if the world could wait. As a new mom myself, I was just watching, trying to figure out how someone could be that calm and that steady.
“I have to ask,” I said. “How are you so good with kids? What’s your story?”
She began to tell me in pieces, snapshots from her life. She was fourteen when she had her first child. She remembers walking home from school, terrified to tell her mom, expecting anger, judgment, and resentment. She braced herself for the worst.
But it never came. Her mom met her with warm hands and gentle words. She wrapped her arms around her and helped her carry the weight of that. She warmed bottles, folded blankets, and kept dinner on the stove. She even made sure the baby was fed and bathed when my friend got home from school or work. My friend didn’t have to do it all on her own.
Now, years later, my friend has gone on to be a nurse practitioner. She has a beautiful family. She is a grandmother who still fusses over fussy babies, rocks them until they sleep, and sits beside her patients on their hardest days.
When I asked her how she does it, she said simply, “I remember how it felt when my mom met me with love and compassion. I want to give that same thing back to other people.”
She said that, and it made me think of 1 Corinthians 15:10: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
That’s what I was seeing in her life. Grace that met her in her fear and didn’t leave her there. Grace that steadied her, shaped her, and then showed up again—in her work, in her motherhood, and now in the way she cares so deeply for others.
Watching her, I realized that the love and care we receive is never meant to stay with us. It is meant to move through us and be poured out for others. And I wondered (and I hope you will too), who in my life needs to feel grace today through my actions? Who can I meet with the same compassion that carried me through my own hardest days?
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
- Who first met you with grace during a hard or defining moment in your life?
- How has God used that grace to shape who you are today?
- In what ways might God be inviting you to let grace “work through you” instead of stopping with you?
- Who in your life right now needs compassion more than correction?
- What would it look like to return the favor—to offer the same grace you once received?
