Laughter is grace in its gaseous form.

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it.

Music is a vehicle that propels me and so many other people toward a place we might call grace.

Of all the exotic aromas and experiences from my sojourn in Ethiopia, it’s the frankincense I miss most.

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

Grace doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live.

Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve. ...... benign good will. unprovoked compassion. the unearnable gift

You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited.

While it's true that you may lose your religion during the course of a lifetime, you never lose your salvation. Once you let Jesus in your kitchen, he just keeps on making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and he never leaves.

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her-hadn't even wanted her, truthfully-but there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world.

My nun, which is how I think of her, was the most profound witness for God's love I've ever encountered in this world. She was a magnet for lost souls, a petite fortress of strength and unconditional love. What this sprightly, silly, lovely woman did from the obscurity of a faded convent in Rust Belt Chicago was to fulfill in a passionate, tireless way the supreme commandment of Jesus' gospel every day of her life.

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands—gentle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator—an artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness.

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