Gratitude Monday: The grace of a mensch

Gratitude Monday and I’m deeply thankful for the life and work of Nelson Mandela.

As of this writing, he’s in critical condition in hospital, with a respiratory condition that he’s suffered since his nearly three decades in prison for his anti-apartheid work. He’s 94 years old, and frail.

What is neither old nor frail are his strength of character, his absolute integrity and his quiet dignity. You’d think a man as vilified and abused for most of his life by the white power structure would have a legitimate case for invoking the wrath of God when he and the ANC took office. But his presidency of South Africa was marked by his focus on national reconciliation.

It has never ceased to astonish me whenever I’m reminded of his gentle strength and genuine forbearance. Ninety-four years old, marked by a third of his life in prison, and he has the physical and moral uprightness of someone with the hand of God at his back.

South Africa is not without its problems. But I wonder where it would be today were it not for this amazing man?

There is a Yiddish term that is entirely appropriate to apply to Mandela: he is a mensch.

We don’t have many of them in our human history. He has added grace to our lives.