WHAT does grace look like in a fallen world? How about dashing out the door with two small children on your way to a baby check-up and locking your keys in the house.

Let me just say, I did not feel very graceful hauling my husband’s two-story ladder out of the garage, carrying it up a dozen steps to our house, and climbing up and down to try half-a-dozen windows to get in.

Nor did I feel very graceful, walking up the street with my two children to a neighbor’s and asking to use the phone.

Or interrupting my husband’s business meeting to ask him to drive thirty-minutes home and let me in.

But it was the second week of January.

In Maine.

And our baby is six-months-old.

I didn’t feel very graceful sitting on the back step, trying to keep him warm while reading to my toddler and waiting for my husband to arrive. Little did I realize, grace was in my pocket the whole time–a key to my heated writing shed with comfy chairs and books and blankets and a phone. All I had to do was take out the key. Instead, I sat in chilly misery waiting for someone to rescue me.

How often are we like this? Wallowing in discouragement and failure, locked out of the comfort and encouragement we seek simply because we fail to use the keys God has given us. Daily time in prayer. Reading the word. Fellowship with other believers. The power and presence on the Holy Spirit.

I remembered the key to my writing shed only a few minutes before Dana pulled in the driveway and felt pretty foolish for my complaining, unhappy heart when such comfort was available the whole time.

We all make mistakes. Getting locked out of the house is the least of them. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t leave us to suffer in the cold alone?

“Let us then  with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and  find grace to help in time of need,” Hebrews 4:6.

Find more scriptures about grace here.