Quotes about Grace

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,' the good thief said from his cross. (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.

Jesus didn't come to merely speak words that were true, He is the Word that makes us true.

To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.

O thou who art the sparrow's friend, he said, have mercy on this world that knows not even when it sins. O holy dove, descend and roost on Godric here so that a heart may hatch in him at last. Amen.

His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the savior's face I saw.

Gentle Jesu, Mary's son, be thine the wounds that heal our wounding. Press thy bloody scars to ours that thy dear blood may flow in us and cleanse our sin. Be thou in us and we in thee that Godric, Gillian, Ailrod, Mouse and thou may be a woundless one at last. And even Reginald if thy great mercy reach so far. In God's name Godric prays. Amen.

Like the rest of the devout, he was incapable of understanding that the Holy One's face is never turned away but constantly looks down on all creatures with a beneficence that they are too busy apologizing for their unworthiness and performing their good works and assuring Heaven of their unfailing devotion to notice.

When we enter the gates of pain and use the healing power of memory, we will hear God speaking, and we can take comfort and rest our weary souls in his crazy, holy grace.

If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen. ... Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ.

Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much. Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you're driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn't have to think about doing. So, think back at the end of the day to the wars you're involved in. How are they going?

I think that I learned something about how even tragedy can be a means of grace that I might never have come to any other way.