Books like What's So Amazing About Grace?

CONVERSION FOR ME WAS NOT A DAMASCUS ROAD EXPERIENCE. I SLOWLY MOVED TO AN INTELLECTUAL ACCEPTANCE OF WHAT MY INTUITION HAD ALWAYS KNOWN.- Madeleine l’EngleWhat’s so amazing about grace - really? Well, for starters, it can pull you out of a desperately Heartless Void into a life of inner abundance and living love. It can plant a seed that will grow enormously, give you rest and shelter, and nourish your parched soul FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. And that’s saying a lot.The world is ugly. Grace is not. The world’ll try to finagle your last penny out of you. Grace gives you inner riches.The world will insinuate, prevaricate and back you into an impossible corner. But Grace will always free you from each and every trap.Remember how ancient Hercules raised an army in ancient times? He sowed Dragon’s Teeth in the ground (the Greeks, like us, had a vivid imagination)!So, what he did, of course, was Plant these teeth in a fertile field - like a crop of potatoes - and by the end of that faraway mythical summer, a group of fully-armed and steely-plated warriors started to sprout. So Hercules, capable and wily hero that he was, used them to get his revenge against the bad guys that were pestering him.Now, how that relates to us is : if we play fast and loose in our social lives, we’re actually cultivating a battalion of armed warriors, so we could be asking for trouble. If we’re not always on our street-smart toes, as the semi-divine Hercules was, the fates have a way of rising up in a massed battalion against our own personal but picayune dreams and values.And that’s why there are so many broken, lonely people in our world...Whereas, a life lived straight, no chaser - as Thelonius Monk played it and tried to live it - yields an abundant harvest of good things in a twisted world!1977 was a threshold year for me...It was very good... and very ugly, the way the world is ugly. But first the good stuff: I met my soon-to-be wife that year. And, the ugly stuff is that I was promoted into a disheartened and greasy backwater of my employer’s department.I was to look after property records. That part was simple. But the environment I worked in was a rest haven for cynical, infighting Lotus Eaters - indolent and issuelessly amoral souls whose daily accomplishments primarily amounted to spreading malicious stories.It was suffocating. Its greasy tendrils threatened to choke me, as the snakes choked old Laocoon and his boys. And it was every bit as dangerous to my positive outlook as one of those Greek Boas.But I endured it, for three long years. Till, thank Heaven, I was promoted again.The new office upstairs was a regular beehive of activity. It seemed like I was going from the frying pan to the fire - but in reality I rather liked the pervading work ethic. It was normal for a change.And then, I met Robert.Robert was a country boy, who couldn’t stand working in a tight space in the midst of urban chaos - and he soon quit his job, before three months were out. But almost as soon as we met, he told me what pure, unvarnished Christianity meant to him - in his heart.It was Sheer Serendipity. I have never so much needed such a heartening message at any other time in my life. I was just escaping from a shark-infested swimming pool and I was mighty glad to be free. And NOW there was peace in my life as well.And THAT was how a serendipitous stranger sowed a seed that has never since stopped giving me Life.Yancey, of course, will tell you a little bit about the stuff Robert talked about back in those glorious Fall Days of 1980. But he’s addressing a different audience.Yancey, you see, is addressing the Disenchanted, Disenfranchised, DE-CHURCHED majority who live in the cities, towns, countryside and villages of our grubby little planet. He tells them how a simple message of just a few words that can pull them FREE of the gloomy and perilous pit into which they’ve fallen and can LIBERATE them forever from the slimy tentacles of the Dark Souls who thrive there upon hapless, fearful minds.He tells them of ordinary people like them - and me - who accomplished the Miraculous in unnoticed, though life-affirming little ways - even without a mainstream religion. For they’ve escaped from the Jaws of Despair. They can LIVE again.What’s so amazing about Grace?Just that.For Yancey, it doesn’t necessarily happen within the Stone Walls of a church.It happens right out in the Open Air of ordinary happenstance... when we MOST need it, and LEAST expect it - the day someone ALTERS YOUR LIFE.The same fateful way it happened to me when I met Robert, so many years ago.