In Vanishing Grace I describe people I call grace-dispensers. You don’t have to be a professional, or educated, or especially skilled, to be a good grace-dispenser. A new book by John Ortberg, the pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California, tells of an ordinary woman in San Francisco who makes an extraordinary dispenser of grace. I’ll let John tell this story as a guest columnist:
… There was a front-page article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a metro-transit operator named Linda Wilson-Allen. She loves the people who ride her bus. She knows the regulars. She learns their names. She will wait for them if they’re late and then make up the time later on her route.
A woman in her eighties named Ivy had some heavy grocery bags and was struggling with them. So Linda got out of her bus driver’s seat to carry Ivy’s grocery bags onto the bus. Now Ivy lets other buses pass her stop so she can ride on Linda’s bus.
Linda saw a woman named Tanya in a bus shelter. She could tell Tanya was new to the area. She could tell she was lost. It was almost Thanksgiving, so Linda said to Tanya, “You’re out here all by yourself. You don’t know anybody. Come on over for Thanksgiving and kick it with me and the kids.” Now they’re friends.
The reporter who wrote the article rides Linda’s bus every day. He said Linda has built such a little community of blessing on that bus that passengers offer Linda the use of their vacation homes. They bring her potted plants and floral bouquets. When people found out she likes to wear scarves to accessorize her uniforms, they started giving them as presents to Linda. …
Think about what a thankless task driving a bus can look like in our world: cranky passengers, engine breakdowns, traffic jams, gum on the seats. You ask yourself, How does she have this attitude? “Her mood is set at 2:30 a.m. when she gets down on her knees to pray for 30 minutes,” the Chronicle states. “‘There is a lot to talk about with the Lord,’ says Wilson-Allen, a member of Glad Tidings Church in Hayward.”
When she gets to the end of her line, she always says, “That’s all. I love you. Take care.” Have you ever had a bus driver tell you, “I love you”? People wonder, Where can I find the Kingdom of God? I will tell you where. You can find it on the #45 bus riding through San Francisco. People wonder, Where can I find the church? I will tell you. Behind the wheel of a metro transit vehicle.
We invited Linda to speak at our church. People with all kinds of Silicon Valley dreams were inspired to standing ovations by a woman who drives a bus. They stood in line by the dozens afterward to talk with her. For the door on the #45 bus opens into the Kingdom of God.
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John Ortberg, All the Places to Go (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2015), pp. 70-72.
Very inspiring…been reading your book i love em all…hope to see you in flesh soon…
How absolutely beautiful to take such difficult job and to turn it into a place of blessing.
I wish I could bring a little of that to everyone I interact with. I ask for help with it everyday, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me
Wow! Now how cool is that? Way to go, Linda!!
Dear Mr. Yancey,
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story. It is such an encouragement to hear of fellow believers “living Christ” on a daily basis. I also wanted to thank you for your lecture on Sunday, March 22, 2015 in Charlottesville, VA. I was blessed to be able to come from my hometown to hear you speak. I have read several of your books and God has truly used you to chance my life. The first book I read by you was “What’s So Amazing About Grace”. After reading the first few pages of that book I realized that I absolutely did not understand the concept of God’s Grace and I realized that I truly wanted to be the type of Christian that represented the love of God. So I have been embarking on a several year journey of being a Christian that “doesn’t miss an opportunity to share the grace of God”. Every day I am grateful that I feel like I am more loving and more at peace because of the things that God has taught me thru reading your books in addition to studying my Bible and praying and listening to God’s voice in my daily life. I can never repay all that you have done to strengthen my daily walk with God. I know I don’t have to–cause well that’s grace now isn’t it! But I just wanted to thank you. I wanted to say something during the questions period but I didn’t think I could finish without crying in gratitude and I was with my daughter so I didn’t want to embarrass her! But just thank you so much. I so appreciate all you do to help the body become true compassionate “Jesus-like” Christians. May God continue to bless your family and you.
Mr. Yancey,
I just finished reading “Vanishing Grace” and want to express both agreement with your perspective on the state of American Christianity in its relationship to government, and gratitude for the spirit in which you address such subject. I believe in a “resurrected Reality” who is with me in this journey, a Holy Ghost who possesses me and not the other way around, a Presence who not only leads me via tugs on an inner “anchor-line”, but also manifests Himself unto others in as much as I decrease that He might increase. In whatever way we minister to this “world around us”, let it be through His anointing, not by my own stubborn, thick-headed reasoning. God bless you, sir, for that which you bring to my table. Never think that, in such vocation, you are positioned behind others who serve. Your words have always been “manna” to me, your humility and your own experience feeding my heart…… jim filer