There’s a scene in the wonderful film “Smoke Signals,” where an alcoholic man who has never really done a noble thing in his life saves an infant from a burning house. As the baby’s parents are trapped and dying up on the second floor, they throw a chair through the window, and then they throw out the baby. The alcoholic is on the lawn below and happens be where he can catch the baby in his arms. He gives the boy safely to the child’s grieving grandmother. She level’s her gaze at him and through her tears says, “You’re a hero. You saved his life!”

He regards her as his lip begins to tremble and he quietly mutters, “I didn’t mean to.”

We stumble into grace. Sometimes we find ourselves on the distribution end of things hoped for and yet unseen. We never meant to. Still, we do.

So the question isn’t whether we should take credit when we discover we have become unintentional means of grace. The question is whether we can take any credit when we actually do mean to bless. How true is our aim in these matters, anyway?

One of the liberating joys of believing in providence is the knowledge that anything God means to do in and through our lives is always more than we intend. We see through a glass darkly, but on That Day we shall see face to face.

- Russ Ramsey