#grace

Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: 'For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.' ... he... felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness... like a gush of warm water... All that remains is to live here quietly for the rest of my life, eating food that my own labour has made the earth to yield. All that remains is to be a tender of the soil. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#gardening #grace #labour #food

You are really and truly and completely free. There is no kicker. There is no if, and, or but. You are free. You can do it right or wrong. You can obey or disobey. You can run from Christ or run to Christ. You can choose to become a faithful Christian or an unfaithful Christian. You can cry, cuss, and spit, or laugh, sing, and dance. You can read a novel or the Bible. You can watch television or pray. You're free...really free. ↗

— Steve Brown

#grace #faith

The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness. ↗

— Tullian Tchividjian

#grace #freedom

...there is therefore now no condemnation for two reasons: you are dead now; and God, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, has been dead all along. The blame game was over before it started. It really was. All Jesus did was announce that truth and tell you it would make you free. It was admittedly a dangerous thing to do. You are a menace. Be he did it; and therefore, menace or not, here you stand: uncondemned, forever, now. What are you going to do with your freedom? ↗

— Robert Farrar Capon

#freedom #grace #jesus #law #truth

He flipped himself onto his side and kissed me. "You're so hot," I said, my hand still on his leg. "I'm starting to think you have an amputee fetish," he answered, still kissing me. I laughed. "I have an Augustus Waters fetish," I explained. ↗

— John Green

#funny #hazel-grace-lancaster #funny

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it in the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine. It was a chilly evening; she thought about that. The goose would be delicious, they must eat as much of it as possible, they must not waste it; she thought about that. ↗

— Kristin Cashore

#graceling #katsa #po #imagination

No one was ever saved because his sins were small; no one was ever rejected on account of the greatness of his sins. Where sin abounded, grace shall much more abound. ↗

— Archibald Alexander

#account #because #ever #grace #greatness

We need days of failure because they help humble us, and through them we can see how God's grace is poured out on the humble. ↗

— Elyse Fitzpatrick

#grace #love

Quietly...softly, God taps on our tense shoulders with His love. ↗

— Shawntel Jefferson

#love #peace #refreshing #winds #love

She wanted to tell him what happened wasn't really his fault, but she knew that wasn't the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew that. It was his emotions that were tripping him up. The tangle of love and memory and what might have been. ↗

— Charles de Lint

#love