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Amazing grace needs a space to appear

10/23/2023

This weekend our kids and grandkids gathered to
celebrated my husbands 85th birthday. We all did our part to make it a joyful time, which it was, but I know this joy wasn't just of our own doing. Some might call it some variation of luck, or fate, or good fortune. I don't dismiss any of those, but what about grace?
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. The lyrics of that well-known song were written by John Newton, a slave trader until God found him and saved him with His amazing grace. I'm not thinking about God saving me from some wretched way of being. But I am pondering what part grace played in our wonder-filled weekend. My faith tells me that grace was an essential ingredient.
Grace comes as a sweet sound when I stop assuming
that I am control of everything that is going on. Some might say that God and I are in partnership, or that I am co-creating with God. Words can't express what is beyond words, but here's my try today.
When I open up and listening to God, when I commit to following the Golden Rule to love my neighbor as myself, grace appears and finds a space to be in my life.

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We Believe, by Mary Lute

10/20/2023

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We BelieveBy Mary Luti
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before God; for [the day] is coming… – Psalm 96:11-13 (NRSV, adapted)

We believe the day is coming
when God’s grace will change the human heart,
and we will live as one with every living thing.

We believe the day is coming
when Christ’s compassion will fill the earth,
and no one will do harm, be hurt, or feel alone.

We believe the day is coming
when the Spirit’s freedom will unbind our souls,
and we will live generous lives for each other
with a joy no circumstance can alter.

We believe the day is coming,
and we wait and work for it with steadfast hope,
for God has promised it, and God is faithful.
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus, come.

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James Finley's prayer

10/7/2023

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Lord God, we thank you for the gift of the desire to be ever more clear and intimate in our awareness of your intimacy with us that’s sustaining us breath by breath by breath. We thank you for this.… We thank you for the desire not to break the thread of that connectedness with you as we go through the day, facing what we need to face, walking what we need to walk through.… We’re interiorly moved by your grace to reach out and touch the hurting places with love, that the suffering might dissolve in love, and to continue touching the hurting places with love until only love is left, and to be patient with this, and to be childlike, and to be open and faithful to this mysterious process in which we incarnate your healing presence in the midst of our lives. And we ask for this through your Son, Jesus. Amen. James Finley, quoted in <[email protected]>

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Amazing grace needs a space to appear

We Believe, by Mary Lute

James Finley's prayer

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