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Kristin Haakenson's avatar

Well gosh, thank you so much for the generous shout-out, dear friend! And what an honor to share a space here with your beautifully redemptive tale of firewood.

I'm inclined toward impatience, wanting to skip the fermenting step and just get to the "voila!" moment in so many situations. My spiritual director had told me that maybe a love for the seasons was placed in my heart for a reason - to really learn the required patience of seasonality. Thank goodness for the wild-growing grace that blooms in charred places!

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Scoot's avatar

"Where the God of Second Chances sows the seed, there will always be another stand of redemptive green."

This needs to be translated into latin and put on a coat of arms. Beautiful!

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Derek Petty's avatar

“But grace grows wild in hidden places, just outside of where we usually look.”

Been looking for grace a lot here lately at the Petty house. Raising a toddler with a 6-day-old has proved challenging in unanticipated ways and looking for God’s grace has been just about the only thing to help us through. But as you point out, it’s the looking for and finding the grace that is the tricky part. We must be willing.

Last night our power went out due to ferocious winds and pounding rains. But instead of cursing the sky that it would interrupt our 2-year-old’s sleep (which it did), my wife and I just sat on our couch and laughed. And I praised God for the time to watch the storm pass by and removing the electric barriers I often allow to get in the way of blessed observance.

And thank you so much for the highlight and the hard work of churning out such enriching content week after week. I don’t know how you do it.

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Sara Dietz's avatar

The Lord provides so generously!

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Cork Hutson's avatar

"We don’t always get a second chance to fix a mistake. But grace grows wild in hidden places, just outside of where we usually look."

Oh my word - I am so thankful for not only second chances, but third, fourth, fifth (decades of chances) ... A life of foolishness, kept safe by the unseen hand of Grace, continually revealing itself in chance after chance until I saw it and embraced it clearly in my heart. Thank you for how "gracefully" you presented this.

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