God's grace...In a thousand gifts

Today, I am celebrating Valentine's Day by counting God's love-notes to me. I am reading this book... (if you click on the image, it will take you to the author's blog)...

and the book in itself has been a grace gift from God. I needed the reminder...the reminder that we will never experience the fullness of our salvation until we are living minutes, days, LIVES of gratitude for God's continual grace to us. His grace did not stop at the cross...it is a continual gift, maybe in the form of frosty breath on windows, a hand to hold when life gets rough, gooey chocolate brownies, a slobbery peck on the cheek from a little one...

I'm learning the practice of thanksgiving...of counting God's graces, and in doing so, impregnating my life, my days, with new wonder and awareness of God's goodness. We say it so flippantly--"God is good...all the time"--but do we really believe it with our lives? It is only when I take the time to stop, to pull out a pen and my journal and write out these simple and not so simple goodnesses, that I truly understand down to my toes what those complex and yet painfully easy-to-say words mean. God is good...all the time. All the time.

And so...the counting begins. The challenge is to make out, to take hold and hold onto, a thousand grace-gifts. And yet, somehow I have a feeling that a thousand will turn into two thousand before the days of this year role into the next. Because God IS good all the time...every second and minute and hour and day. And He never grows weary of telling us, lavishing our lives with gifts of the sweetest kind. Today, my list grows, and I am thankful.


204. a new start...every day!
205. blankets piled atop my frozen-no-more toes
206. a chance to learn incredible things about the human body
207. little chocolates in a tiny red mailbox
208. a bird chirping in the creeping warmth
209. A phone call...declaring that a beautiful child of God--once an orphan, now a forever KIRK--will be coming HOME forever! (see details HERE)

my "thankful board"

He loves me...enough to tell me every day in a thousand new ways. What beautiful gifts has He given you today?