A while back I become very aware of the Grace that had been given to me, and became very interested in the subject of GRACE. I wrote a few posts on grace on a couple of lists that I was subscribed to, with some very positive private comments. My aim has been to write other posts on the subject of grace to my blog, but many interruptions and time constraints (and forgetting how to post to my blog) hasn't seen that happening yet.
Every day, as part of my daily devotional, I read the day's entry from a book titled "Grace Notes" (Daily Readings from a Fellow Pilgrim) by Philip Yancey. The reading selections are taken from his writings over several years. One of those writings was the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?", and yesterday's reading was titled "Grace-Starved". I decided to try to get back to my postings on grace, with an introduction to PY's excerpt that was yesterday's reading. On another note, it is connected to Easter and, since Easter occurs on the 24th of this month, it is very fitting.
"I saw in Russia in 1991 a people starved for grace. The economy, indeed the entire society, was in a state of free fall, and everyone had someone to blame. I noted that ordinary Russian citizens had the demeanor of battered children: lowered heads, halting speech, eyes darting this way and that. Whom could they trust?"
"I will never forget a meeting in which Moscow journalists wept -- I had never before seen journalists weep -- as Ron Nikkel of Prison Fellowship International told of the underground churches that were now thriving in Russia's penal colonies. For seventy years prisons had been the repository of truth, the one place where you could safely speak the name of God. It was in prison, not church, that people such as Solzhenitsyn found God."
"Ron Nikkel also told me of his conversation with a general who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The general had heard of the Bible from the old believers and had admired it, but as a museum piece, not something to be believed. Recent events, though, had made him reconsider. In late 1991 when Boris Yeltsin ordered the closing of all nation, regional, and local Communist Party offices, his ministry policed the dismantling. "Not one party official" said the general, "not one person directly affected by the closings protested." He contrasted that to the seventy-year campaign to destroy the church and stamp out belief in God. "The Christians' faith outlasted any ideology. The church is now resurging in a way unlike anything I have witnessed."
"In 1983 a group of Youth With A Mission daredevils unfolded a banner on Easter Sunday morning in Red Square: "Christ is Risen!" it read in Russian. Some older Russians fell to their knees and wept. Soldiers soon surrounded the hymn-singing troublemakers, tore up their banner, and hustled them off to jail. Less then a decade later, all over Red Square on Easter Sunday people were greeting each other in the traditional way, "Christ is risen!" . . . "He is risen indeed!"
(from the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" (256-257) by Philip Yancey).
I highly recommend Yancey's book "Grace Notes" -- it's a one-page-a-day selection from Yancey's writing, and I agree with Billy Graham's comment on the back cover of the book that "There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more.
Grace and Peace,
Elaine
Every day, as part of my daily devotional, I read the day's entry from a book titled "Grace Notes" (Daily Readings from a Fellow Pilgrim) by Philip Yancey. The reading selections are taken from his writings over several years. One of those writings was the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?", and yesterday's reading was titled "Grace-Starved". I decided to try to get back to my postings on grace, with an introduction to PY's excerpt that was yesterday's reading. On another note, it is connected to Easter and, since Easter occurs on the 24th of this month, it is very fitting.
"I saw in Russia in 1991 a people starved for grace. The economy, indeed the entire society, was in a state of free fall, and everyone had someone to blame. I noted that ordinary Russian citizens had the demeanor of battered children: lowered heads, halting speech, eyes darting this way and that. Whom could they trust?"
"I will never forget a meeting in which Moscow journalists wept -- I had never before seen journalists weep -- as Ron Nikkel of Prison Fellowship International told of the underground churches that were now thriving in Russia's penal colonies. For seventy years prisons had been the repository of truth, the one place where you could safely speak the name of God. It was in prison, not church, that people such as Solzhenitsyn found God."
"Ron Nikkel also told me of his conversation with a general who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The general had heard of the Bible from the old believers and had admired it, but as a museum piece, not something to be believed. Recent events, though, had made him reconsider. In late 1991 when Boris Yeltsin ordered the closing of all nation, regional, and local Communist Party offices, his ministry policed the dismantling. "Not one party official" said the general, "not one person directly affected by the closings protested." He contrasted that to the seventy-year campaign to destroy the church and stamp out belief in God. "The Christians' faith outlasted any ideology. The church is now resurging in a way unlike anything I have witnessed."
"In 1983 a group of Youth With A Mission daredevils unfolded a banner on Easter Sunday morning in Red Square: "Christ is Risen!" it read in Russian. Some older Russians fell to their knees and wept. Soldiers soon surrounded the hymn-singing troublemakers, tore up their banner, and hustled them off to jail. Less then a decade later, all over Red Square on Easter Sunday people were greeting each other in the traditional way, "Christ is risen!" . . . "He is risen indeed!"
(from the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" (256-257) by Philip Yancey).
I highly recommend Yancey's book "Grace Notes" -- it's a one-page-a-day selection from Yancey's writing, and I agree with Billy Graham's comment on the back cover of the book that "There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more.
Grace and Peace,
Elaine
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