No, grace not a girl (reminded me of the movie-there's something about mary)..lol
so no, not grace the girl..grace the noun
Grace has tons of meaning and way of usage, the one I'm speaking about means
"5. A favor rendered by one who need not do so; indulgence."
which simply means getting something you don't deserve..
"The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church, you need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do, it cannot offer grace. The reasons why Christians fail to exhibit this is because the good news of the gospel of grace has not penetrated to the level of our emotions so we don't live the way of grace.."
"Guilt was not my problem as I felt it. What I felt most was a glob of unworthiness that more than pardon was a sense that God accepted me, owned me, held me, affirmed me, and would never let go of me even if he was not too much impressed with what he had on his hands. Smedes goes on to say that he has identified 3 common sources of crippling shame: secular culture, graceless religion, and unaccepting parents. Secular culture tells us a person must look good, feel good, and make good. Graceless religion tells us we must follow the letter of the rules, and failure will bring eternal rejection."
"Like city-dwellers who no longer notice the polluted air, we breathe in the atmosphere of ungrace unawares. As early as preschool and kindergarten we are tested and evaluated before being slotted into an advanced, normal or slow track. From then on we receive grades denoting performance in math, science, reading, and even social skills and citizenship. Test papers come back with errors-not correct answers-highlighted. All this helps prepare us for the real world with its relentless ranking, a grown-up version of the playground game-king of the hill. Every institution, it seems, runs on ungrace and its insistence that we EARN our way. Justice departments, airline frequent-flyer programs, and mortgage companies cannot operate by grace. Governments hardly know the word. Fortune magazine annually lists the 500 richest people; no one knows the names of the 500 poorest."
"..unearned gifts and unexpected pleasures bring the most joy. Grace billows up or, as the bumper sticker says-Grace Happens. For many, romantic love is the closest experience of pure grace. Someone at last feels that I am the most desirable, attractive, etc creature on the planet. Someone lies awake at night thinking of me...The world starves for grace. Religious faith-for all its problems, despite its maddening tendency to replicate ungrace-lives on because we sense the numinous beauty of a gift undeserved that comes at unexpected moments from Outside...we hope against hope for another place run by different rules...Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people...Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. I yearn for the church to become a nourishing culture of that grace."
"If not for the books i read and the friends i keep, I would still be the same person I was 10 years ago.."
So it's my challenge that with all the ungrace in the world, to consciously make the effort to show grace-even the little acts of kindness without judgement, and not get pulled into the flow of making excuses..
