Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

explained to Bill that what we celebrate in the saints is not their piety or perfection but the fact that we believe in a God who gets redemptive and holy things done in this world through, of all things, human beings, all of whom are flawed.

Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are.

Which is exactly why our demons try to keep us from people who remind us how loved we are. Our demons want nothing to do with the love of God in Christ Jesus because it threatens to obliterate them, and so they try to isolate us and tell us that we are not worthy to be called children of God. And those are lies that Jesus does not abide.

In the Jesus business, community is always a part of healing. Even though community is never perfect.

trying not to need others isn’t about strength and independence; it’s about fear.

Because in the end, we aren’t punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.

knowing that our sin is not what defines us, can finally set us free.

But to be religious (despite all the negative associations with that word) is to be human in the midst of other humans who are as equally messed up and obnoxious and forgiven as ourselves.

And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because if it’s real it means we don’t “deserve” it.