#grace

The real safety net of life is community, family and nature. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#life-and-living #safety-net #family

In the secret recesses of man's nature the grace is given disposing and enabling him to yield. Though the will must at last act from its own resources and deliberate impulse, it is influenced through the feeling and the understanding in such a manner as to give it strength. It is utterly hopeless to penetrate this mystery: it is the secret between God's Spirit and man's agency. There is a Divine operation which works the desire and acts in such a manner as not to interfere with the natural freedom of the will. The man determines himself, through Divine grace, to salvation: never so free as when swayed by grace. ↗

— William Burton Pope

#conversion #free-will #god #prevenient-grace #freedom

Our true nature is one of innocence and freedom to choose how we live. We need to be brave enough not to give that away. Don't give up on your right to, and sense of, TRUTH, Justice, and GRACE. ↗

— Jay Woodman

#choose #freedom #grace #innocence #justice

I started down but Sam caught my arm and knelt down himself to look. "For crying out loud," he said. "It's a racoon." "Poor thing," I said. "It could be a rabid baby-killer," Cole told me primly. "Shut up," Sam said pleasantly. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#funny #grace-brisbane #prim #rabid #racoon

The right thing to do is so easy to see when you're seventeen years old and don't have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you're grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn't a tidy little arrow pointing to it. ↗

— Huntley Fitzpatrick

#growing-up #life-lessons #life

At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#jesus #sinner #the-ragamuffin-gospel #life

The simple things in life are the greatest gifts. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#living #simple-living #life

The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole — And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul! ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#grace #heart #light #love #purity

You take one last look and think it would have been something to climb that silo and peek out the window before the interstate plowed through. To see the land unbroken. You are compelled, of course, to consider how the Ojibwe felt, returning to the campsites at Cotter Creek one day only to hear the sound of sawing and the lowing of oxen. Life will circle around on you. Also visible from the silo window is a gigantic billboard pointed at the interstate and advertising a casino owned by the Ojibwe. The billboard says, WINNERS, 24/7. ↗

— Michael Perry

#and-the-road-to-roughneck-grace #visiting-tom-a-man #life

Pure, unadulterated, consistent love for God and pure, unadulterated, consistent love for others is the summation of all the law God has given us in both the Old and New Testaments. Of course, the problem is that we never obey these simple commands. We always love ourselves more than we love God or others. We are always erecting idols in our hearts and worshipping and serving them. We are always more focused on what we want and how we might get it than we are on loving Him and laying down our life for others. The law does show us the right way to live, but none of us obeys it. Not for one millisecond. Even though our children cannot and will not obey God's law, we need to teach it to them again and again. And when they tell us that they can't love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them. We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior. ↗

— Elyse Fitzpatrick

#parenting #life