Posts from February 2013 (Page 2)

Burning in the Rain by Richard Blanco Someday compassion would demand I set myself free of my desire to recreate my father, indulge in my mother’s losses, strangle lovers with words, forcing them to confess for me and take the blame. Today was that day:  I tossed them, sheet by sheet on the patio and gathered them into a pyre.  I wanted to let them go in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding beside the azaleas and ficus bushes, let…

“I have found it true in my own life that certain moments capture the feeling of other moments; they show in one instant something I would like to be true of other instants as well.”  One might well say this about the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.  We pour water over the head of the one being baptized as an “outward and visible sign of the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ…” acknowledging the free gift of God’s love…

“To speak of grace is to say that finally our lives are not our own, that we are not only recipients of a gift we did not create, the very gift of life itself, but that throughout our life we are given gifts we do not deserve – friends, experiences, joy in the midst of pain – and that at the end we will be upheld by a power we do not control, promising a fulfillment not of what we…

  Having an understanding of God’s Grace may come in stages.  Sometimes we need reference points to help us build our house of faith.  This is why we have used the words Porch for Prevenient Grace (the Grace that goes before us), Door for Justifying Grace (when we say Yes back to God’s Yes to us) and House for Sanctifying Grace (where we live out our faith).  It may seem overwhelming at times to truly grasp the depth and breadth…

 We have completed week 4 of our 5-week series called from DIY to Renovation By Grace and move into the final days of this focus on Grace.  Throughout the series we have explored what it means to recognize, name and claim God’s Grace in our daily life.  We have lived in Ephesians 2 and read verses 1-10 and will return to where we began with 2.19-22 this week.  In the coming months we hope this passage may provide a reference point for…

“…little by little – less by taking pains than by taking it easy – the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person.  God does most of it.  The end of the process…is eternal life.”  (from Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking pp. 104-105) It is a goal to be sanctified.  I would like it if my sense of feeling forgiven leant an urgency to my…