grace

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her__adn't even wanted her, truthfully__ut there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world.

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, __ithout it, religion will surely suffocate you._ Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious.

The Grace of God and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the pre-eminence.

I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn__ love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, __o you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through.

Grace will meet you in the valley, and her song will carry you home on the wind to another sky filled with ethereal beauty unfolding and love everlasting.

The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi__ poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.

A bolt that raised her heart to blazing heightAnd made the vertical the very thrust of hope,And found its path at last(Slow work of Grace).

What was it you told me, Jesus?_ she asked him softly. __o you remember? Love is love is love. Pain is pain is pain. Knowledge is knowledge. It doesn__ matter what shape or form it takes, what matters is how you use it, what you do with it, and if you can accept it with some measure of grace. If you can, it__ the most beautiful thing in the world. If you can__...

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

When __octrinal integrity_ (a term usually defined by those using it) trumps kindness and grace, faith has wandered out of bounds. Anything claiming to be truth that does not lead to compassion for our neighbors cannot rightfully be called the truth.

She heard Piers give an excited little cry and someone gave an excited little cry in return, and Grace Vaughn appeared in the open doorway, laden down with garment bags.For one fleeting moment, Ellie saw both husband and wife__ faces light up before they resembled their usual expressions _ a scowl and a pout respectively.

Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood.

We make a fatal mistake when we try to force Scripture to offer redemption to those who want to go to heaven but who don't want a relationship with the living God. By trying to offer some minimal standard of conduct that will allow them to qualify for salvation while continuing to to pursue their own agendas, we distort the gospel and destroy its power, and we concoct legalistic games to give them a false sense of security.

If at anytime this life of ours grows feeble, or low, or lonely, I know no other remedy than to return to its Eternal Source, to God Himself; and through Him all the means of grace become again living and true; and through Him all His creatures become again near and dear and accessible

Winter is already a lost shape, forgottenin the ground. Instead, here is Springwith all the grace of a womansmoothing out her apron.

There are graceful ways of accessing your purpose and success, with time, invitation, gentleness, cooperation and surrender.

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. __y definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness,_ Jean told me. __race doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live.

Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.-Sonia