Is love the answer to the world's problems? (story)

Or even in this image below.
image.jpeg

Doing what comes naturally is grace? To me grace is a type of courage to do what is not natural yet beneficial to another.

This is true but I am tempted to ask: Which form of love in our images requires more of a challenge?
although both of them may be given with much grace.

Depends on each individual person, but I personally find your image far more easier and less challenging than my image.

It is extremely hard to determine what is beneficial to another and often we get it wrong and make things worse.

I’m rather surprised at your answer. Why do you find it to be that way?
Look at the woman. She’s a Mom. That is her son. He is all clean and paid for :evilfun: smiling and happy.
How difficult is it to love that baby?

But I may be wrong. Why do you feel that it is easier to love, care for and reach out to that man than for the woman to love her son? at least in that image.
is it from necessity?

Speak for yourself; I’m perfect! :mrgreen:

I am not a parent (my wife and I cannot have kids) and am not familiar with that experience (call it fear of the unknown) whereas I am more than familiar with your image and so don’t fear that expression.

Doing what comes naturally could be another definition for grace …or being graceful anyway. I love to dance and I’m a great dancer. It comes naturally to me so at times my dancing might seem to be quite graceful.
But there is graceful in action and there is also grace-filled in action. Is there a difference?

Grace can work as a type of courage under fire especially when one might lose their own life.

I like to think of graceful and grace as “almost” identical and so I may not be a graceful dancer but if I am an enthusiastic dancer then my enthusiasm is graceful (not the dancing itself).

I don’t see the two as anywhere near identical. Graceful implies that something can be done with ease and fluidity; grace implies unmerited reception of some gift, which is given without expectation of its return as in There but by the grace of God go I.

It can be done with ease and fluidity because God gave you a gift. You are graceful because you are full of God’s grace.

That is the origin of the word ‘graceful’.

A devout atheist may be a graceful dancer, given the proper skills and training.

So?

Just because an atheist says that there is no God, does not make it so. God’s grace also extends to atheists.

The atheist will swear that his accomplishments are all his own doing. But, as a theist, I see your point.

As an agnostic, I see my achievements in part from my own genes and DNA, gifts from my ancestors - and also as a result of my very own struggles, motivations and doings (for lack of a better word at the moment.

That’s not to say that all of that stardust that descended from wherever was not full of possibility - obviously it was.

It took two years from the time that God’s grace entered the captain of that slave ship and had his spiritual epiphany - you know, the one who wrote Amazing Grace - to eventually stop his slave trading.

I suppose that finances pawn grace. But I know that human consciousness does not always work in leaps and bounds. I suppose that it is also possible that we do not see the gift which has been given so freely…both to ourselves and others.

Do we think that grace is like magic?

The grace of God implies a quality of God that is given with ease, fluidity and in an unbiased manner (it is full of grace - graceful in nature).

Is it being redundant, then, to say that the grace of God is graceful? Or at least a tautology?-- as in–the taste of a peach is peachy.

Meaning, the grace of God is effortless and fluid (as in “this” is “that”).