grace

He remembered the gracefulness with which she moved in battle__ike liquid flesh. There was no one quite like his wife, and he never felt more triumphant and free than when he was in her company.

Find the Grace in the things you can__ change, and help somebody if you can.

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.

If it wasn__ for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would__ been dead or someplace screamin_ in a nut house a long time ago.

Grace does not work like a penny in a slot machine. Grace will move you only when you want it to move you, and only when you let it move you. The supernatural order supposes the freedom of the natural order, but it does not destroy it.

Many times in life, those who do the most correcting, need the most correcting.

When she remembers to look at herself in a spiritual light, she sees the deep capacity for love this pain has brought her. The realization fills her with wonder. Now she can rise in the morning and greet the new day with eagerness and grace.

He's God....and his grace is a part of him working relentlessly on our behalf...never leaving, never abandoning, never stopping.

He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.

Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven.""How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?""Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Something about his receding hairline just drives me mad.

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.

For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today--and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace--hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now.

God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesson too. It's those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again.

We preach grace, but we don__ always practice it. We talk about God__ mercy, but we don__ always want the people who need it most to know it or get in on it. We say we are in the redemption business, but the door to that redemption is often locked by us from the inside. We say, __ome in! All are welcome!_ but __ll_ is often marked with an asterisk. How, I ask, can the world change _ how can heaven come to earth _ if we stingily protest against God for his grace to others, grace we have freely received ourselves? How can we pray __hy kingdom come,_ and be resentful toward God and those he allows to enter the kingdom in his way and his timing?

Imagine if we applied as much grace to others as we give ourselves & as much law to ourselves as we apply to others.

We have taught this generation how to "market" the Gospel but we have neglected to encourage them to "preach" the Gospel.

For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart . . . the heart's distrust is greater than the mind's blindness. It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance [of God's love] than for the mind to be endowed with thought.

All things acceptable to God the Father must come from God the Son, whether us or our works.