Ordinary Grace

I read a book this weekend from a writer I'd never heard of. I borrow books from the library on my tablet & there are limited choices so I tend to take what's available. And that serendipity has been pretty good for me. I've run across some very good books & my love of reading has been reawakened.

This book was called Ordinary Grace. It's set in 1961 & told from the view of 13 year old Frank. He tells his story of a summer in a small Minnesota town where he lives with his Methodist minister father Nathan, his mom Ruth, older sister Ariel & younger brother Jake. It's definitely a summer where Frank has to face grown up issues & where he discovers the calming, ordinary grace that guides his father's life. I don't want to spoil anything but I loved this book a lot. The last couple of hours I was dragging my feet finishing it.

There are several very enlightening passages that show a faith that I sometimes struggle with. This was my favorite, copied from the book:

We believe too often that on the roads we walk we walk alone. Which is never true. Even this man who is unknown to us was known to God and God was his constant companion. God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn't suffer, that we wouldn't feel despair and lonliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love. And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all. That there would be surcease. That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our lonliness, that we would be with him and know him and this would be heaven. This man, whose life may have been days and nights of endless waiting, is waiting no more. He is where God always knew he would be, in a place prepared. And for this we rejoice.

William Kent Krueger Ordinary Grace.