How to live out that grace in our own lives.

Eph.2: 1-10


I bought a poster in San Salvador, El Salvador in 1991. It hangs on the wall above my desk as I write. Created at the Universidad Centroamericana, it commemorates the 1989 murders of 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her 16-year daughter. They died at the hands of the Salvadoran military because of their tireless witness for God’s justice in our broken world.


As we consider Lent, the example of the martyrs of UCA reminds us of the gravity of the journey. It embodies the sacrifice that some have made for their understanding of the obligations of a Christian life. It calls us to courage and commitment as we examine how faith and grace transform us if we allow it. In this time and place, these are not matters of life and death for most of us – yet this calling has everything to do with how we choose to live.

In the second chapter of his letter to the people of Ephesus, Paul asserts that “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.” That part is taken care of. Our responsibility is to figure out daily how to live out that grace in our own lives. Our inheritance is to believe and to act and to love. That is grace for me – this love that troubles the waters. The Lenten journey reminds us of the stakes.

Jennifer Sanders