Gifts and Gratitudes - a 5-Day Reading PlanSample

During the hour drive it takes to get to the lake on a drowsy Sunday afternoon, I think of the sermon we’d heard that morning. The preacher preached pure gospel and how to be born again.

Twenty-five years he’s been preaching it in our little country chapel, to the hog farmers, the corn croppers, the mothers with babies in arms. How you can’t work for God’s love, angle for it, or jockey for it—you can’t earn God’s love. You can only turn toward God’s love.

When we all un-pile up at the lake, and the kids run toward the water, my mama and I, we stand there, toes in sand and the wind hair.

Our faces turned right toward the sun.

It’s a gift, the preacher said. Salvation is the gift, the one wrapped in God taking on skin, laying His bare love out for the world, arms spreading to the very ends of the limbs of the tree of life.

There is all the kids’ laughter. There is their running. There is my radiant mama smiling. There is this singular seagull writing across the sky. These are gifts, all gifts.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces. I often falter, but this is the habit to wear for a lifetime.

And really? Christ is the offering, salvation is the gift, and repentance is what makes us recipients of grace. Christ is the gift. Christ is the bridge home. Christ is our joy. There is only one gift—the one ocean of Christ that falls as rain over us in a thousand ways. How can I forget this, ever stop giving thanks for Him alone?

Happiness is not getting something but being given to Someone.

It is the sacrifice of Christ that returns us to God and communion with Him is possible anywhere and bless the Lord, oh, my soul, bless the very Maker of my soul. . . .

Prayer

Oh God, my God, holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to You for the smallest of graces. Forgive my faltering and make this thanksgiving to You the habit I’ll wear all my life. Because You, my Lord and Savior, You are the one Gift, the one Bridge—the one Ocean that falls as rain over me in a thousand ways. Kindle my heart again, to know that happiness is not getting something but being given to Someone.

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