Grace...

...some days I am just more aware of it than others.  Are you? 

I opened Frederick Buechner's Wishful Thinking this evening to find a passage I wished to share with a friend.  While there, I browsed back through some of my underlines and turned-down pages.  (I tend to be a rather interactive reader.  Reading a book is a dialogue, to my way of thinking.) The book is subtitled "A Seeker's ABC".  It is a primer of sorts, introducing a good deal of religious jargon, but with refreshing perspectives.

The passage I had been looking for was Buechner's sapient and perceptive entry on wine which you can read here.  But, as I read back over his entry on grace, I was overwhelmed by the many ways grace has invaded my life on this day alone.  With gratitude in my heart, I invite you to browse his words and see if they open your eyes to graces as yet unseen...

"After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore.  Not so with grace, for some reason.  Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left. 

"Grace is something you can never get but can only be given.  There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or bring about your own birth.

"A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams.  Most tears are grace.  The smell of rain is grace.  Somebody loving you is grace.  Loving somebody is grace.  Have you ever tried to love somebody?

"A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace.  There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.  There's nothing you have to do.

"The grace of God means something like: Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It's for you I created the universe.  I love you...."

Comments

[Ali]

This is such a nice quote. Thanks for sharing.

PS Congrats on becoming a catechumen. May God grant you many, many years. I hope you enjoy this period of learning. I enjoyed my time as a catechumen and having the chance to spend extra time with my priest learning about the faith. I entered the Orthodox Church in February 2008. (But I think I mentioned this to you already.)