Quotes About Grace

sixth chapter of Luke: "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.

forgiveness meant that God is for giving

Like the Buddha and Jesus, who knew they couldn't control our lives, but could infuse lives with their selves, we have been graced with a few people.

Sometimes - oh, just once in a blue moon-I resist being receptive to God's generosity, because I'm busy with a project and trying to manipulate Him or Her into helping me with it, or with getting my toys fixed or any major discomfort to pass. But God is not a banker or a bean counter. God gives us even more, which is so subversive. God just gives, to us, to you and me. I mean, look at us! Yikes. God keeps giving, forgiving, and inviting us back.

Could you say this about yourself right now, that you have immense and intrinsic value, at your current weight and income level, while waiting to hear if you got the job or didn't, or sold your book or didn't? This idea that I had all the value I'd ever need was concealed from me my whole life. I want a refund. In this world of suffering and grace, of brokenness and sky, of bad skin and buckteeth and one another, I cannot add to the value of myself.

As Father Ed Dowling said, sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses. When we put them on, we see the awful person, sometimes even ourselves, a bit more gently, and we are blessed in return. It seems, on the face of things, like a decent deal.

We are lovely as sparrows, and all sparrows are sweet. No one thinks, "That sparrow is kind of a loser, and boy, is that one letting herself go.

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable. Mercy brings us to the miracle of apology, given and accepted, to unashamed humility when we have erred or forgotten. Charge it to our heads and not our hearts, as the elders in black churches have long said.

It stops and gasps at beauty and is bathed in it. And sometimes it begins to weep.

surrender means you get to come on over to the winning side.

Topsy-turvy is often a symptom for the presence of God--the last become first, the hungry are fed, the obnoxious are welcomed.

Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.

The mainland can stretch until it breaks at the weakest points, and those weaknesses are called faults. Each island represented a victory and a defeat: it had either pulled itself free or pulled too hard and found itself alone. Later, as these islands grew older, they turned their misfortune into virtue, learned to accept their cragginess, their misshapen coasts, ragged where they'd been torn. They acquired grace.

One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.

not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul.

One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes.

seems to me the most beautiful thing on earth, perhaps because it is unearthly, and the touch of God in us: the miracle of mercy, the unexpected, the arms of the prodigal son's father, the ravens bringing food in the night, the cup running over.

This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul.

Isn't it a lovely ball?" She looked around at the sea of lace and tulle and silk, the blaze of lights, the laughter and the music and the sway and swirl of movement. "I wish everyone could be as happy as I am.

choosing a gown of a dark blue-gray so soft that in the shadow it looked almost indigo. The line of the neck and the sweep of the skirt were both very flattering, and cut in the fashion of the moment. Deliberately she wore no jewelry, except very small diamond drop earrings. Her shining silver hair was ornament enough.

but can it forgive everything? Should it? Which

she was dressed in the softest grape blue, a gentle color neither navy nor purple, nor yet silver. It was subtle, expensive and extremely flattering.

She knows what matters and what doesn't,' she answered, choosing her words carefully. 'She remembers what she receives, but never what she gives. She doesn't hold grudges, and if she thinks something is funny she will laugh, whether it is the done thing or not. She loves the opera, and gorgeous clothes. She is honest when it is fashionable not to be, but she is never unnecessarily unkind. And she will fight to the death for a cause she believes in.

The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware.