"The surest cure of the feeling of being unacceptable is the discovery that we are accepted by the grace of the One whose acceptance matters the most."
Lewis Smedes
"God..approves ungodly people."
Romans 4:5
God's grace is wonderful. We don't have to do anything to get it. We don't have to deserve it. We don't have to be worthy. Isn't that why it's called "grace"? I believe that gentle rain of grace is really falling on us all the time, but it is especially in those moments of acute failure and dryness that we can see it most clearly for what it really is - totally unearned, totally free acceptance. Any other time we might feel we had somehow earned this favor by our good works or spiritual progress. But we can't feel that way in the gutter. We can't feel deserving when we've fallen in the ditch. And that is precisely when the beauty of grace shines the most! For His acceptance and love reach down to us even then.
Grace is for losers. It's for rejects and failures. It's for the unworthy and the unlovely. Thank God it's for me! It's for everybody, for all the broken lives that He sees as His beautiful creation, His perfect little children who have forgotten where their home is, who don't know who their Daddy is. Thank you, God, for grace!