Thought I'd drop by and share my favorite poem for Lenten contemplation:

[IrishAyes]

Three Dollars Worth of God

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man
or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

— Wilbur Rees


Unfortunately I have met people intellectually challenged enough to read that as a racist screed instead of what it truly is, the most powerful expose of the condition of many a human soul. We all need to be on guard against letting it creep into our hearts.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. Give me enough grace that it makes me feel good

But not so much it actually moves me to change.

Did you ever read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship? In it, he speaks about "cheap grace." Grace is God's inexhaustible treasury, from which blessings are showered generously, without asking questions or fixing limits. If grace is free, then how could Bonhoeffer complain about "cheap grace?" Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace as "grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares.... Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves." Cheap grace means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "concept" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. No contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. We still go on in our comfortable ways, continuing to sin, reassured of our salvation through God's grace. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, redemption without the cross.

Bonhoeffer contrasts cheap grace with "costly grace." "It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him." It is costly because it costs us our lives, and it is grace because it gives us true life. It is costly because it cost the life of the Son of God -- "You have all been purchased, and at a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20) -- and what was costly for God should be costly for us. Christ calls us to pick up our crosses, and, if we do, he promises us eternal life. Grace is free, but costly. And grace without works is cheap grace.

Incidentally, a brief word about Bonhoeffer, in case you are unfamiliar with him. Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran who felt that it was his duty as a Christian to oppose Hitler and the Nazis, who imprisoned him, then sent him to a concentration camp, then hanged him. He certainly put his money where his mouth was, so to speak.

[IrishAyes]

2. Unworthy though I am, I'm a lifelong Bonhoeffer devotee. Same with Niebuhr, whose name for some

reason remains more difficult for me to spell right! But I enjoyed your post tremendously and will beg you on bended knee to let me present it quickly to the newspaper for inclusion with the poem that sparked it. Do hurry - I think the paper goes to bed late this evening.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. Please do!

[IrishAyes]

4. Thanks. I'm sure it will help shepherd the thinking of many.