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Have you had a chance to bite into Brennan Manning’s  All Is Grace:  A Ragamuffin’s Memoir?  If not, do yourself a favor and make that happen as soon as possible!

BUT, I would be remiss if I didn’t warn you that it’s a tough read.  Legalistic people who care more about how things look are going to struggle with this VERY REAL story.  It’s not for the religious faint of heart.  It’s messy and somehow I think this might possibly be what Paul was suggesting when he wrote:

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”  1 Corinthians 1:26-31, The Message.

I truly hope and pray that you’re curious enough to check it out.  I loved every minute of that read!

If there is anything that we need to tap into during this Easter Weekend, it should be the majestic marvel of what we too flippantly handle and proclaim as GRACE.  The expanse and depth of grace is much too vast to even try to explain or define.  Yeah, we like our acronyms but they’re sometimes just too trivial to carry the rich message of such a universally proportioned truth.

I wonder if we really see what is in front of us every single day?  Do we recognize the grace that engulfs us?  Are we remotely grateful… at all?  Is that the banner that hangs over our life?

  “GRATEFUL BECAUSE OF GRACE”

A few mornings ago I read a few lines that really stirred me.  I’m submitting these words because I think there is supreme value in gratitude for the grace we live in.  It’s a game changer about how we present ourselves, how we respond to challenges, how we relate to people who can be ugly to us, or how we see a  world that seems to be flipped upside down from some of our most sacred values.

Instead of another chocolate bunny, I give you this:

When Job’s life is about to be taken away from him, he can say one of two things.  He can curse God, as he does for a moment, and say, God, why not fifty-one years?  Or he can surrender to love and grace and say, God, why fifty years?  Why did I deserve anything?  When we take on that attitude, we’ve made a decision for grace.

“Naked I came into the world, and naked I will leave” (Job 1:21).  What do I have, brothers and sisters, that has not been given to me?  All is grace.  All is given.  Who gave me this hand?  Who wiggles these fingers?  Who created this eye that I cannot explain or understand? 

I cannot even make this hair grow.  It is all gift.  From beginning to end, everything is grace, everything is given.  There is nothing we deserve.

We have no real rights.  There is nothing we have to have.  When you lose your friend, your lover, your life-giver, you can curse God and say, Why was he taken?  Why was she taken?  Or you can say, Why was she given at all? 

You can say, Why is that love gone?  Or you can say, Why did I deserve a moment of love?  Why did I deserve a second of this life? 

God is creator and I am creature.  God created me out of nothing and some years back I did not exist at all.

“Yahweh gives and Yahweh takes away.  Blessed be the name of Yahweh” (Job 1:21)

Richard Rohr, O. F. M. from Days of Renewal

Jesus said, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”  John 11:27, NASB.

He Is Risen!  Hallelujah!  ALL is GRACE!

-MDP-