Quotes about Grace

It is not easy for us, busy people, to truly receive a blessing. Perhaps the fact that few people offer a real blessing is the sad result of the absence of people who are willing and able to receive such a blessing. It has become extremely difficult for us to stop, listen, pay attention, and receive gracefully what is offered to us.

When I demand from others what only God can give, I experience pain.

Truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it.

In Christ we live as God's beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that.

God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a "first" love, an unlimited, unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself.

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness.

Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.

Personally I believe that being an elder can be a real grace. After having seen so much of life and having "made it" in so many ways there is still that possibility of growing into a second childhood, a second naiveté. I think that is quite an exciting possibility and I pray that God will allow you to be reborn in such a new way of being.

If you believe that you are the beloved, you can offer forgiveness, even when it cannot be received.

Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God.

Just as a whole world of beauty can be discovered in one flower, so the great grace of God can be tasted in one small moment Just as no great travels are necessary to see the beauty of creation, so no great ecstasies are needed to discover the love of God.

God is there. God's light is there. God's forgiveness is there. God's boundless love is there.