192 The Leash and the Light

The good, the bad and the ugly...it's ALL grace

Jan 22, 2026

Last Night’s Walk

I took Wiggles for her usual late night walk. The air had that late-winter bite, the kind that feels clean and fresh to the lungs on each inhale. The neighborhood streets were quiet, just the soft shush of her paws on the pavement and the rhythm of my own breath turning to fog with each exhale. I was praying, or more accurately, I was just talking into the dark, the way you do when you know the listener is closer than your own shadow.

I was recounting my day. The work accomplished, the things left undone, the small obediences, the stubborn resistances. A mental ledger, mostly debts. And as I walked, a simple, staggering truth descended on me with the weight of that cold, clear night sky.

It was all grace.

Every single bit of it.

Not a single thing on the “good” side of that ledger was my own doing. Not the discipline to work, not the patience I managed, not the faint glimmer of a pure motive. It was all loaned strength, all borrowed light. I was like a man taking credit for the moonlight, simply because I stood in it.

I looked down at Wiggles, trotting happily on her leash, utterly dependent on me for her direction, her safety, her next meal. In her dog-mind, this walk is her idea, her joy. She doesn’t comprehend the hand holding the leash, the house waiting with water and food, the care that schedules her life. She just receives it. She lives in a state of unthinking, tail-wagging reception.

And I realized, with a humility that stung more than the cold air, that I am Wiggles.

The thought unfolded as we walked. That contract that came through? Grace. The repaired relationship? Grace. The patience I didn’t have but found anyway? Grace. The breath in my lungs this very second, the blood in my veins, the neural spark that allows this thought? All grace. Undeserved. Unearned. A gift laid at the feet of a creature who, left to himself, would chew it up and bury the pieces.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The verse didn’t come to me as a quotation. It came as the structural law of my universe, as true and physical as gravity. My salvation, the colossal, epoch-shifting fact of it was the first and greatest gift of grace.

The strength to get out of bed on the hard days? Grace. The ability to see my own sin clearly without being crushed by it? Grace. The crazy, illogical peace in the middle of a storm? Grace upon grace. It is the currency of this new kingdom, and I am a pauper living in its endless treasury.

But by the grace of God I am what I am.

What am I? A man walking a dog in the dark. A former tourist in a godless cosmos, now a stumbling citizen of a different country. A slow student in the 3 a.m. classroom. I am what I am because He decided I would be, and then He empowered the being of it. Any good produced is His energy channeled through my surrendered wiring.

I stopped under a streetlamp, its light pooling on the cracked sidewalk. Wiggles sniffed at the edge of the circle of light, intrigued by the shadows. I stood in the center of it.

That’s the position, I thought. To live in grace is to consent to stand in the light. Not my own light. A light cast from Him, the Most High , illuminating me, yes, but also revealing every flaw, every crack in the pavement of my soul. I can’t boast about the light. I can only be grateful I’m in it, and that it shows me where to step next.

We turned for home. The gratitude that rose wasn’t a list. It was an atmosphere of new understanding. It was the air itself. To see every single thing, the challenging email, the unexpected bill, the moment of joy, feeling of laziness, the stubborn hope as a facet of the same unmerited favor? It changes everything. It kills the ledger. It turns life from a test you’re failing into a story you’re being gifted.

The leash in my hand felt different. It wasn’t just a strap of nylon. It was a thread of grace, connecting me to a simple creature who trusts me completely. And my hand holding it? Also held. By a Father who, for reasons that defy all my understanding, has decided to pour out His favor on me, not in droplets, but in a ceaseless, silent flood.

I am Wiggles. Dependent, beloved, and walking home in a light I did not make.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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