What Does Grace Look Like?

I am reading a book of Essay's by Elie Wiesel and in one of them he shares this thought. "Some will say to me, yes, but when you needed help nobody came forward. True, but it is because nobody came forward to help me that I felt it my duty to help them." 

A humbling indictment of the nature of man! It is so easy for us to say, look I'm comfortable, I'm safe.  Why should I care about those people? It's really none of my business. Besides, I'm only one person what impact could I possibly have? We love rationalization, it does help us to feel justified for looking the other way, for keeping our hands in our pockets, for averting our eyes. Yet deep in our hearts we know it for what it is; a cop out. 

What did the rationalization of the people of his day cost Mr. Wiesel? His mother, his little sister, his father, his friends, his community, his city, his faith in his God. Because nobody came forward, Mr. Wiesel as a young boy watched his mother and little sister walk hand in hand to the gas chamber. No boy, no child, no person should have to watch his loved ones be forced to walk to their deaths. Yet, that is exactly what we allow to occur every time we refuse to come forward. His wound is so deep that Mr. Wiesel cannot sit back and watch others go through the hell he went through. That is why he lectures us so powerfully by saying, "It is one's duty to ask every day, where am I in relation to God and to others?"

What does grace look like? It looks like a man with a wound so deep that he is haunted by memories so many years later, yet, when he sees the longing look for help in the eyes of others today, he steps forward. He doesn't want another little boy to watch his mother and his little sister be forced to walk to the horror of the gas chamber. Grace says, I went through that pain and I don't ever want you to go through it, so I will stand up and fight for you, because you matter! Thank you, Mr. Wiesel, from the depth of my heart that your words have have begun to soften. I was becoming too comfortable, too safe, too full of rationalizations.