However Much We Hate The Law, We

The Life Of Grace Is Not An Effort On Our Part To Achieve A Goal We Set Ourselves. It Is A Continually Renewed Attempt Simply To Believe That Someone Else Has Done All The Achieving That Is Needed And To Live In Relationship With That Person, Whether We Achieve Or Not. If That Doesn't Seem Like Much To You, You're Right: It Isn't. And, As A Matter Of Fact, The Life Of Grace Is Even Less Than That. It's Not Even Our Life At All, But The Life Of That Someone Else Rising Like A Tide In The Ruins Of Our Death.

The Reason For Not Going Out And Sinning All You Like Is The Same As The Reason For Not Going Out And Putting Your Nose In A Slicing Machine: Its Dumb, Stupid, And No Fun. Some Individual Sins May Have Pleasure Still Attached To Them Because Of The Residual Goodness Of The Realities They Are Abusing: Adultery Can Indeed Be Pleasant And Tying One On Can Amuse. But Betrayal, Jealousy, Love Grown Cold, And The Gray Dawn Of The Morning After Are Nobody's Idea Of A Good Time.

For All Its Rooted Loveliness, The World Has No Continuing City Here; It Is An Outlandish Place, A Foreign Home, A Session In Via To A Better Version Of Itself-and It Is Our Glory To See It So And To Thirst Until Jerusalem Comes Home At Last. We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Taste. Restore To Us Soups That Spoons Will Not Sink In And Sauces Which Are Never The Same Twice. Raise Up Among Us Stews With More Gravy Than We Have Bread To Blot It With... Give Us Pasta With A Hundred Fillings.

That, You Know, Is Why The World Exists At All. It Remains Outside The Cosmic Garbage Can Of Nothingness, Not Because It Is Such A Solemn Necessity That Nobody Can Get Rid Of It, But Because It Is The Orange Peel Hung On God's Chandelier, The Wishbone In His Kitchen Closet. He Likes It; Therefore, It Stays. The Whole Marvelous Collection Of Stones, Skins, Feathers, And String Exists Because At Least One Lover Has Never Quite Taken His Eye Off It, Because The Dominus Vivificans Has His Delight With The Sons Of Men.