Grace

I was reading the United Methodist Reporter when I ran across this article: From Ordinary Grace to Extraordinary Grace.

He talks about ordinary means of grace -- prayer, communion, baptism, worship. And then he talks about those extraordinary, surprising means of grace. We can't predict those extraordinary, surprising ways in which God changes our lives. It is a gift, completely at the control of God.

I was interested in how the author of the article links the ordinary means of grace to those surprising moments. The ordinary means of grace are the way in which we prepare ourselves for God's surprising intervention. We are tempted to skip them, to get out of the habit, but we need to resist that pull. I like his analogy -- farmers plow and prepare a field, planting crops, in the anticipation of God's gift of sunlight, rain and growth. The farmer can't predict the latter, but he must continue to do the preparatory work. Without the discipline, the surprise might be missed.