Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it. . . which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.
No matter how many good deeds we preform, they aren’t the ticket to earning God’s favor. God graces us in spite of what we do in this life, not because of.