By Sister Marian Rose Mansius
“Of this I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace
that was granted me in accord with the exercise of his power.
To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery.
Ephesians 3:7-9
The letter of Paul to the Ephesians speaks of the gift of grace given to him, as minister
of the Gospel, as well as to us who are ministers to all we meet.
Today is the anniversary of the death of Rosa Parks, the little African American seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white man as she road home from work on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
When asked how she found the courage to do that, she simply responded:
I was not tired physically; no I was tired of giving in.”
I like to think that her courage came from the grace that God gave her at that moment of challenge the racism prevalent in the 1950’s. It earned her the distinction of sparking the civil rights movement and the eventual overthrow of the segregation laws.
God’s grace can do great things for those who have the courage to recognize it and
act upon it. Let us pray that today, we can use the little graces that God gives us,
to be kind to those we meet today both in word and in action.
