The slow work of grace

Reflecting on the friendship and the invitation expressed in the previous post, I turned to visit Fr Stephen's blog and found this timely and excellent rejoinder. I am going to excerpt just the beginning of it, and then let you go and read the rest of it where it can be found, at Glory to God for All Things

In the minds of many, grace is a legal concept – an expression of the kindness of God in the forgiveness of sins. As such, grace is instant and complete. This fits well within the legal conceptions of salvation. In the classical understanding of the Orthodox faith, salvation can indeed have a quality of “suddenness” – the thief on the Cross found paradise “in a single moment” according to the hymns of the Orthodox Church. But for most people, salvation is a life-long process in which we “work out our salvation from day to day in fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). That experience, like most of life, has a slow quality to it.