Ordinary Grace

by William Kent Krueger

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Bobby had a gift and the gift was his simplicity. The world for Bobby Cole was a place he accepted without needing to understand it. Me, I was growing up scrambling for meaning and I was full of confusion and fear.

The sermons he preached, which were marked less by evangelical fervor than by a calm exhortation of God’s unbounded grace, were well received by congregations composed primarily of sensible farm families who in most aspects of their public lives were as emotionally demonstrative as a mound of hay.

And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it’s only a moment’s pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time. Better, I think, to wish for her wisdom, a virtue not so fickle.”