The Banality of Grace

Most of the literature on spirituality has to do with our spiritual disciplines and the things we do to draw near to God. This book is about the ways in which God reveals Godself to us in the everyday and the difference that makes in our lives. We can usually muster the courage to live faithfully through the momentous events in our lives. Courage falters in the details of the day. So, it is in the daily, the mundane, pedestrian, prosaic, quotidian, and even banal that God shows us our place in God's momentous story. We witness the banality of grace in our everyday lives: in worship, as we seek reconciliation between individuals and groups of people, in spiritual experiences that are more common to us than we realize, in an ethic informed by the future revealed to us by God, and by lives lived in response to this good future. The singularity of this book is the stories the author tells from his experience as well as from literature. He employs narrative to show, rather than tell the reader about, God's presence in our lives.