❝ Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News.

❝ It all reminds me of my wife, who in the midst of busy days, often says to me, “Look at me.” She wants to see my eyes and for me to see hers. She delights in relationship. She does not want our lives to be only about tasks and doing. She wants us to see each other’s face with joy. I think our God wants us to look at Him — not to accomplish anything, but just to behold his beauty.

❝ ‘It is finished.’ May those words land on your bones for the nights when fear tells you the cross was a beginning & you must finish grace.

❝ 

If arithmetic is numbers, and if algebra is numbers and letters, then grace is numbers, letters, sounds, and tears, feelings and dreams. Grace is smashing the calculator, and using all the broken buttons and pieces to make a mosaic.

Grace isn’t about having a second chance; grace is having so many chances that you could use them through all eternity and never come up empty. It’s when you finally realize that the other shoe isn’t going to drop, ever. It’s the moment you feel as precious and handmade as every star, when you feel, finally, at home for the very first time.

Grace is when you finally stop keeping score and when you realize that God never was, that his game is a different one entirely. Grace is when the silence is so complete that you can hear your own heartbeat, and right within your ribs, God’s beating heart, too.

❝ And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.