October 12, 2022

This week’s Collect is a goodie. Grace precedes us and follows us – we are always and forever inside a luxurious buffer of grace. When grace penetrates your pores, then you are given to “good works” – i.e., acts of love and kindness, which, btw, are decidedly NOT random, despite the bumper sticker.

Good works are not random because they are already prepared by God. That is what Paul tells us in Ephesians.  “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Alert Episcopalians will recognize this verse from our post communion prayer: “And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.”

Time to pray.

“Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (Proper 23 – BCP)