Why Do I Need Grace?
The Nickel Mines' shootings of the Amish school girls a few years past and that Amish community's response taught the world a lesson in living out grace...A theological textbook definition of grace is "unmerited favor from God." Okay...so, in real time terms, what is that? It's one of the most simple yet complicated concepts to understand and to embrace fully. Flannery O'Connor tries to get to grace through rage and despair in her writings and often uses violence as the catapult over the wall to grace. I have another friend who tells me she "drinks in grace," and another who tearfully cites it as something she doesn't deserve. I personally dance around with the idea, the reality of grace. I can grasp it for a few seconds, like a fish passing a submarine window, but then its gone and the open ocean's there--blue but nebulous. I know that in my spiritual development that it's an incredibly important thing. I know this because I struggle with it so much. So, here's what I've learned so far....Grace is that young man who says he knows he's dying with cancer but who still has a smile on his face, it's another car on a dark road, it's the loaves and fishes from some kid's lunch. it's the potential for the redemption, the rewriting of the past, it's the fact that God still sacrifices because I'm too thick-headed to get it without an object lesson, it's also the back of a toddler's neck...
Grant You Grace
Kelly Long
Grant You Grace
Kelly Long






















Wow, need I say more? I pray I will have grace and forgiveness in my life. I have seen the movie, and it cought me by surprise
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Thank you, Kelly. i need to hear that! i too pray that i will have grace.
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Kelly Grace is a hard concept to grasp because we are "human" and as such all the human baggage we carry around makes it hard to grasp the fact that we cannot earn grace it is Given to us by Our heavenly Father who paid our price for it by giving His Only begotten son on the cross for us........Grace what a wonderful freeing word it is . Makes me strive to be a better person though I know in my humanity I will always fall short of the perfection I would hope to attain. God Bless you and Embrace our "God Given Grace" Happy Holidays.
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