Gift be with you

Wow!  A new year is here.  Christmas has come and gone and the gifts have been opened, some returned, and the gift-giving has subsided…unless you’re like me who has a daughter with a January birthday.  How did you do with receiving gifts this Christmas?

In my line of work, I often hear conversations end with the phrase  “grace be with you”.  It sounds so spiritual, doesn’t it?  So Christianese.  I even sign my emails that way sometimes…mostly because I want people to think I’ve got it all together in the giving out of grace to those around me.  Ha!  Well, I recently heard someone describe grace this way….”take the word grace and replace it with the word gift…that’s another way to understand grace”.   Maybe I should end my emails with “gift be with you”.

We are nothing more than daily recipients of the gift.  The gift of grace.  We often don’t deserve gifts.  We never deserve grace.  For that reason I want to be a grateful recipient of it.  I blog because I want to orient my life around the gift….make it the theme of my life….no matter how I may bumble and stumble through it.   I’m right there with you.  Trying to figure it out.  I’ll be the first to admit that just because I blog about it doesn’t mean I’m great at it…but if I can point others to that pure gift – His pure grace – well then I can lay my head on my pillow at night content in the transfer.  That’s pure Jesus.

If we focus our lives on flaunting what we know…what we do….what we don’t do…that’s not what Christianity is supposed to be about.  It’s about knowing Jesus, and if its not, then we’re orienting our lives around our abilities and works.

With any gift…there is a giver involved.   I think when people say “grace be with you” they are saying “may you experience the life transforming gift of God – the giver – that will keep and sustain you.”  You’re nothing more than a recipient of the gift.  Daily.  365 days a year.  Be a grateful one.

So here’s to the anticipation of another 365 days of new possibilities and new opportunities for grace sightings and receiving.  Happy New Year!