Good Gifts

God in the Yard: Week Four

Sometimes the thoughts take longer to come.  This week there was a question that lingered in the air with no place to land.  What is celebration?  Under this Crabapple tree, celebration means the apples haven't started to fall.  Yet.  Celebration is a party.  An invitation to others.  The release of a tension.  The elements of celebration:  remembrance, extravagance, familiarity.  What have I celebrated?  I made a short list.  What would I celebrate next?  I came up empty.  

Nothing forseeable to celebrate.  It can't be.  What crowds it out?  Ungratefulness. Entitlement.  Or perhaps humility and trust.  It could be either way.  Was I unwilling or just unknowing?

A friend stopped by, returned an item loaned, shared her current hopes and fears.  Good choices are all around her plate, but which one to partake of?  I said, "Take the path you want."  I know that sometimes there are only good choices, not always one holy and one repugnant to God.  He can give a selection, just gives it, and any one we choose we simply put our fingers around it and smile.  And he puts his arms around us and says, "I'm so glad you like it. Let's enjoy it together."

He has done this for me... given me what my heart longed for.  Given the gifts of answered prayer.  In this season, this home in Denver, he's redeemed an old burdensome job, given purpose in ministry, provided a "boundary of dwelling," helped my son (helped me with him), provided for an anniversary dream, gave me a community of mothers different from me, made our finances sure, provided a husband's love of his job, his wife, his children, took away the fear for the future.  I began to wonder even early on, "Will all things be answered here?  All the things I prayed in that borrowed bedroom with heavy hearts and sighs?  Will he bring them all to the table and settle them?"  He has done that one-by-one.

He is in the habit of giving, loves to give good gifts.  And more are coming.
More are coming!

I will celebrate when the prayers I pray come to fruition.  There are more redemptions. Why shouldn't there be?  He is making all things new.
I made a list.
I await the chance to celebrate.