Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”
With the cats needing more than their usual cuddles and the house requiring a lot less than the usual cleaning (because of construction), I’ve been doing a lot more than my usual reading.
The Ragamuffin Gospel is a book about Christianity by former Franciscan priest Brennan Manning. Manning argues that Jesus’ gospel was one of grace, and that efforts to earn salvation are misguided, as it is impossible. He laments that the true meaning of God’s grace has been lost in society amidst a constant search to please God. (Wikipedia)
I love this book. I am a Ragamuffin.
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“To be alive is to be broken;
to be broken is to stand in need of grace.”
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“Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy,
we have been restored to a right relationship with God
through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son.
This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.”
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“The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace,
that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real,
God’s loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.”
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“Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement,
and death will be part of your journey,
but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors.
No evil can resist grace forever.”
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“Whatever we have done in the past,
be it good or evil, great or small,
is irrelevant to our stance before God today.
It is only now that we are in the presence of God.”
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“We should be astonished at the goodness of God,
stunned that He should bother to call us by name,
our mouths wide open at His love,
bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
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“Paul Tillich never tired of saying,
“Faith is the courage to accept acceptance,
to accept that God loves me as I am and not as I should be,
because I’m never going to be as I should be.”
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“For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God,
it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence
to accept that the love of Christ
knows no shadow of alteration or change.
When Jesus said,
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,”
He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged,
and disheartened along the way.”