Living in the Llano uplift of the Texas Hill Country my home sits amidst granite outcroppings. Small to large boulders. Some with moss. Some without. Some solo. Some Divinely stacked.

Those Divinely stacked function as condos for critters. A family of black ground squirrels rent out the address 15 feet off the corner of my back porch.

Come summer I’ll spy them on their stomachs under my patio table eating the black fruit off of our Texas Persimmon trees. No one taught them manners. They’ll leave the pits and stains for me to clean up.

For some reason this doesn’t bother me. I’m not sure if it’s the setting. Or that I love the trees and how they provide. Or that this is the first time I’ve been around black ground squirrels.

Whatever. They’re in my “give grace” column. 

There are people in my life who reside in that column as well. I’ve never really autopsied it but I suspect it depends on the mood I’m in or experiences I’ve had.

There are others who never start out in that column. It’s like I banished them to the “earn grace” part of the ledger from where they may or may not ever relocate. Good luck.

For some reason this doesn’t bother me. But it should. It really should.

“Then the master called the servant in.‘You wicked servant,’ he said,‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ – Matthew 18.32-33

Jesus needs to work on me. I should give people more grace than I give squirrels.