Electricity fascinated me as a kid. I often wondered what electricity looked like. How did it get into the wall socket? If I couldn’t see it, was it real? Those questions captured my childhood imagination.

Sometimes I’d stare at the electrical outlet on the wall next to my bed and stick my finger into it. The zap I got convinced me electricity was real.

Maybe grace is a lot like electricity. We can’t see it or touch it. We can only experience it—and when we do, it usually surprises us.

The solution to a problem pops up out of nowhere. An encouraging word comes through an email or social media post just when we need it. A bitter fight with a loved one turns into a pathway of understanding and forgiveness as we reach out, hold hands, and pray together an Our Father.

It’s all grace. Pure. Unexpected. Amazing.

In her book, Sin Boldly, A Field Guide for Grace, Cathleen Falsani calls grace getting what we don’t deserve. It’s unprovoked compassion. Benign goodwill. The unearnable gift. It shows up in relationships. It sneaks up on us when we least expect or deserve. It’s better felt than defined. Like electricity, we can’t see or touch grace, but when we experience it, we know grace is real.

I like to think of grace as the pure energy of love—the Divine Electricity—that supercharges us with wisdom and compassion. And if God is love, then I wonder, can we plug into grace like we plug a cord into an electrical socket and receive the Divine Spark?

Maybe we can. When we take time to meditate, to be alone with the Creator, we plug into grace. As we turn to the Holy Spirit and ask for wisdom to resolve a problem, we knock on grace’s door. When we stop and notice love surging through the warm hug of a friend or fill with awe watching autumn leaves blaze with color, we touch grace. And as we count the people and things for which we’re grateful, we experience grace. Real. Tangible.

Grace invites us to understand we’re the human part of the Divine Team. We’re co-creators with Infinite Love. But, our side of the team lacks Divine Power without the wisdom and guidance of God’s grace. We connect with that grace through daily times of quiet and stillness so we can be divinely led by Wisdom and Compassion.

Like electricity, grace is everywhere, all around us, all the time. We only need the heart’s ears to hear it and wisdom’s eyes to see it. When we plug into grace, we see the Light. We become a Light.

—brian j plachta
brianplachta.net

Practice: What does grace mean to you?
How have you experienced grace?
How do you plug into grace?