Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.'" Moira smiled as she quoted the ancient sage, then shrugged. "It made sense to me. After that, I started laying my problems and needs before God and asking for grace and guidance and whatever other virtues he thought I needed.

You can still live with grace and wisdom thanks partly to the many people who write about how to do it and perhaps talk overmuch about riboflavin and economy, and partly to your own innate sense of what you must do with the resources you have, to keep the wolf from snuffing to hungrily through the keyhole.

Dear God, I don’t ask for fame and fortune but for an opportunity to embrace many. I don’t ask you to make my life perfect but full of love. With every mistake I make, or with any success I have, I ask to feel your grace along the way, for the rest of my life. In Jesus’s name, amen.

A brief, well-crafted story that is relevant to your topic is one of the most potent ways to maintain the attention of your audience. But the story must be kind. Benjamin Disraeli said: "Never tell unkind stories." Inconsiderate and insensitive stories do not bring grace to those who hear them, and may actually leave the audience dispirited.

We did the usual beauty, grace, anti-dirt spell, voice of a songbird, the works…it is never that kind of beauty that we gift. It is a spell. You are the most beautiful woman in the world to your true love. To everyone else, well… that’s up to nature. But, you are decently pretty. I don’t know why you are complaining.

What would it be like to live as a butterfly, being admired by the world for your color and beauty and grace? What would it be like to live as a spider, having people shriek and jump and throw a shoe at the very notice of you?I have tasted both―looks of desire and repulsion.How sad it is that we judge a life by such a trivial thing as appearance.

She [the Virgin Mary] was normal. She had already had other children. The Bible tells us that Jesus had two brothers. Virginity, as it relates to Jesus, is based on a different thing: Mary initiated a new generation of grace. A new era began. She is the cosmic bride, Earth, which opens to the heavens and allows itself to be fertilized.

My last words to him were to assure him that we would bring Sally to join him later. And you know what your dad said? He said that he would wait for as long as it took."Grace bit her lip. "But she never came, did she? And he never stopped waiting.

It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. But a child rejoices in presents!

She heard Piers give an excited little cry and someone gave an excited little cry in return, and Grace Vaughn appeared in the open doorway, laden down with garment bags.For one fleeting moment, Ellie saw both husband and wife’s faces light up before they resembled their usual expressions – a scowl and a pout respectively.