January Twenty-First

GRACE strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness ... . It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign with us as they have for decades ... . Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted ... ."

-- PAUL TILLICH, "The Shaking of the Foundations"
Image from Life magazine archives