Experiencing Grace

My posts have been rather nonexistent lately and I apologize to those of you who eagerly await that email offering another way to waste a couple of minutes during the work day.  J  As I promise to hop back to the life of writing shortly, I wanted to post a quick quote that I read last night in The Ragamuffin Gospel.  I fell in love with this quote mostly because people can relate to the idea of being accepted and tend to spend most of their lives seeking it.  But, to be able to fully grasp the idea of an eternal acceptance and to experience grace at all cost, I figured it was definitely something worth mentioning! 

  

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.  It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.  Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying:  

‘You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.  Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later.  Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much.  Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything.  Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’   

If that happens to us, we experience grace.”

-Paul Tillich