Costly Grace

I've been reading The Cost of Discipleship alongside a new biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Not surprisingly I've been contemplating the nature of grace:

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner."

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Grace is not the light lined

brilliance of sun-dipped leaves, bricks, eyes

but

air, rich with the smell of water-darkened earth,

whispering the wavering voice of distant thunder on our faces

and although we in the city, with our oak trees

red-tipped bushes beneath our windows,

chemical green St. Augustine purchased by the yard

simply turn on a windshield wiper,

somewhere there is a farmer bowing his head.

It is grace when it nourishes, not when it dazzles.