Grace

Michael was tired, there was no doubt of that.

After over two hours of play at his favorite vaguely space-themed play facility, he was clearly bored with all of the play structures and bounce houses and other venues of rambunctious physical activity. We could tell, as he was now stalking other children in hopes of drawing some excitement off of whatever their lives had to offer.

One group of kids, a subset of the kids attending a birthday party, was playing keep-away with a balloon. This was an irresitable attraction for Michael, who wormed his way into their group, no doubt hoping his presence would either not be noticed or would be disregarded as merely one of the other many children in the group.

I watched their interaction for a bit, and after becoming satisfied that no ill will was shown either to Michael or from him, I turned back around and continued my conversation with my wife.

A few minutes later Michael came running up to us from the other direction.

He was grinning from ear to ear, and in his hands he held a bright purple balloon. Following closely behind him was another little boy, one of the birthday group. He was calling out something unintelligible.

“Michael, where did you get that balloon?”

“It’s mine!” he said.

“He took my balloon!” The other boy cried.

“Michael, did you take this balloon?”

“But I…” he started.

“It’s my balloon,” the little boy said again.

“Michael, give him back his balloon!”

Michael thrust the balloon at the little boy, brow knitted into a severe frown. He folded his arms and turned back toward me, but not before exclaiming “I hate you!” at the balloon boy.

“Michael, we’re done. Let’s go get your shoes.” I marched him over to the shoe caddy and we retrieved his shoes. As I put them on his feet I told him “Little man, this is not how we make friends. We don’t steal balloons, and we certainly don’t tell people that we’ve stolen things from that we hate them. This is being mean.”

He said nothing.

“Now you’re going to go apologize to that little boy for what you did.” I steered him over to the little boy, who was bouncing his balloon up in the air. His parents noticed what I was doing and asked him to pay attention.

“Go on, Michael.”

Through fresh tears, he blurted out “I’m sorry I took your balloon!” and he darted away.

“You did the right thing, Michael.”

I knew he didn’t want to. I knew he felt horrible about it; though more likely because he’d been caught and forced to give up the prize, and then suffer the indignity of having to abase himself in front of another. Either way, I wanted to be sure he did the right thing in hopes that later on in life it would come naturally.

I continued to instruct and encourage him on our way out of the building.

That’s when we heard the little balloon boy come running up, bright purple balloon in hand.

“Here. This is for you,” he said, and he handed Michael the balloon.

“Thank you!” Michael said, brightening suddenly.

“Thank you, that was very nice,” I told the little boy, who pranced off, beaming.

As we got into the car, Michael said “That little boy gave me the balloon anyway!”

“Yes he did. That was grace, Michael. You didn’t deserve it, but you got it anyway.”

Like God’s grace, His unmerited favor in the midst of our evil toward Him. Not a purple balloon, but everlasting life.