grace ... like rain.

i've been thinking a lot about grace.

grace never gets old. i never stop needing grace. grace never stops loving me. it's always new. it's ever relevant. utterly relevant ... perhaps THE most relevant thing in life.

in the drought of my soul, grace tastes good like rain. like the purity of water to a parched throat. it's freeing. cleansing. amazing.

i wear grace like clothing. it covers me ... all my flaws and insecurities. it keeps me warm against the cold night of the soul and it breaks the winds of change so that i am not knocked over.

my next step is by grace.

my current place is by grace.

my [hi]story is all by grace.


grace ... the gift. freely given from God's hands.


and all is gift.


"the reformation was a time when men when blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace--bottle after bottle of pure distillate Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. the word of the gospel--after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps--suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started ... Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case." --robert capon, as quoted by brennan manning in "the ragamuffin gospel"


yes, by the free-gift grace of God, i am what i am. one untimely born, not fit to be called an apostle, the last and least of all the apostles.



pass me that bottle. i'll drink it to the dregs.