Blue Like Me

I always think I understand Grace. When it gets right down to it though, I don't. I still don't get it. There may be moments of clarity but I still don't get it. This quote from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller pretty much sums up where I am at.

Rick tells me, looking back, that he was too proud to recieve free grace from God. He didn't know how to live within a system where nobody owes anybody else anything.

Though he understood that God wanted nothing in return, his mind could not communicate this fact to his heart, so his life was something like torture.

More than that, grace did not seem like the thing I was looking for. It was too easy. I wanted to feel as though I had earned my forgiveness, as though God and I were buddies doing favors for eachother.

This is where I have been stuck that last 3 or so years. My mind can't communicate the nature of grace to my heart. I find myself feeling quite tortured at times. It's painfull. So much so, that I find myself avoiding the subject all together lately. So, I find myself laying incredibly self-depricating guilt trips on MYSELF because I can't measure up to my own warped standards. I go through cycles of this. Discipline. Guilt. Discipline. Guilt.

If you haven't read this book yet, do.