Happiest Grace

During the hour drive it takes to get to the lake on a Sunday afternoon, I think of that sermon we’d had in the morning. The preacher preaching pure gospel, 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 unpile at the lake, the little girls run and cousins squeal happy at the water’s edge.

My mama and I, we stand there, toes in sand and the wind blowing back 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 their laughter. There is their running. There is my mama smiling. There is that singular seagull writing across the sky. These are gifts. They beg praise to Him. Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces. I falter, but this is the habit to wear for a lifetime.

And really? There is only one gift — the one ocean of Christ that falls as rain over us in a thousand ways.

Christ is the offering and 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. 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.

Water keeps washing up over my toes.

A whole sea rushing up to meet the feet turned.

A sea rushing up to the shore and washing the feet turned …

And a Father catching his girl falling … all this happiness … just in Him, right until last light.

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 of 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.