Gift of Grace: Little Inspirations That Invite God's Blessings

God's grace takes mundane forms in this slender volume of earnest, slightly eccentric Christian inspirations. Chand, author of Under God's Wings: Miraculous True Stories of Christian Faith and Hope, devotes a chapter each to the seven spiritual virtues--hope, charity, justice, temperance, prudence, fortitude and faith--that flow from grace. These virtues have been the subject of sermons throughout the ages, and while Chand invokes Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Lincoln and many Bible passages, she doesn't tread new spiritual or rhetorical ground. Apart from some daffy assertions (thanks to the fortitude of American GIs,""World War II was decided in record time""), her original contribution is to document the workings of grace in her own life. When compulsive shopping threatens her with ruinous debt, God grants her temperance. When a""horrific legal dispute"" sends her""plummeting hopelessly to the emotional bottom"" with her""sanity slipping away,"" God restores hope. Even bathroom breaks require grace, as she discovers when she ignores God's""still, small voice"" telling her to avoid a certain toilet, which promptly overflows when she flushes it. Though the book's basic argument--that listening to God about the small stuff can open the heart to his wisdom about profundities, and that grace can be a daily gift--is sound, Chand lingers much too long on stories about the divine influencing the banal.