You're worried about permissiveness in the way the preaching of grace seems to say it's okay to do all kinds of terrible things as long as you just walk in afterward and take the free gift of God's forgiveness. While you and I may be worried about seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn't. He wasn't afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of probati...
2. The Children of Light Get Flustered
Matthew 13:24-30
Illustration
Robert Farrar Capon
In the story that Jesus tells, the enemy sows his evil seed and then goes away. He seems confident that the damage he intends will be done. Robert Farrar Capon says that the enemy doesn't have any real power over goodness anyway: The wheat is in the field, the Kingdom is in the world, and there is not one thing he can do about it. But, Capon adds, "he can sucker the forces of goodness into taking ...
Older women are like aging strudels - the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own.
