What Can I Do For You?

What Can I Do for You?

The phone rang early on a Saturday morning, but I’m glad I answered it. The caller quickly introduced herself, then told me she had been at an event earlier in the week where I had spoken. Cutting to the chase, I asked her, “What can I do for you?”

“Oh,” she said, “I remember you said something about baseball, so I wanted to offer you some tickets for a game later this month.” She told me she and her husband had Astros tickets they had not used once in the current season. At field level. Behind the home dugout. With a parking pass and club-level access.

I was becoming really, really grateful I’d answered the phone. Because I love baseball. Especially September baseball. And particularly September baseball when my home team is making a run for the wild card thanks to a white-hot August. I don’t often go, because it’s not in my budget. But on a random Saturday morning, a person I’d never met offered me four tickets I could not afford and a choice of two dates on which to use them, and then she offered to bring them to me to boot! We made arrangements to meet, and I thanked her sincerely and profusely. She’d enjoyed the talk I’d given so much, she said, that she wanted to do something nice for me in return. And she certainly had.

Later I thought about my skeptical attitude toward the phone call and how quickly it had changed. I anticipated being asked for something—instead I was given something. I imagined there was something I might do for the caller, but instead she meant to do an unexpected, undeserved kindness for me. There was no work to be done on my part. A gift was extended with no strings attached.

My unknown caller that morning became to me a living example of grace. God does for me what I could never do for myself. He bestows on me things I cannot afford and do not deserve. Wonderful, deep, solid, eternal, irrevocable things. That’s what he does for me, when I can do nothing for him.

It is not what you and I do. . . . It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!

Galatians 6:15, MSG