full of {good} things

The sky continues to drizzle, the smell of warmth from the furnace's maiden run this season blends with the spicy pumpkin scent of tea, and I sit here longing to be snuggled in a blanket but can't muster the energy to actually retrieve one. Floors creak and objects unidentifiable to me thump above as if an alarm is sounding "nap time is over, nap time is over." The monitor, no longer mostly silent, is shrieking with the sounds of two sisters sing-shouting "Come Thou Fount of every blessing..."

It would be almost magical this rainy-snuggly first real fall day; except I haven't showered in days, dishes cascade over my counter tops, the church bulletin awaits completion and then there is dinner to be fixed. And that precious 15 month-old girl with only two small teeth pushing through six more.

How easy it is in the midst of all those things to forget...forget to live what I say I believe. Mainly, that God is good and that in Christ is all fullness of joy.

This morning I read 

"The heart is as insatiable as the grave until Jesus enters it, and then it becomes a cup full to overflowing. There is such a fullness in Christ that He alone is the believer's sufficiency..."

I've been chewing on it all day.  I know I write a lot about gratitude, and for those of you in close proximity to me, I know I can sound like a broken record speaking of gratitude, but I truly, truly believe that if our lives are not marked with gratitude, we are living not only like hypocrites but practical atheists.

As Ann says:

Without trust in the good news of Jesus, without trust in the good news of God's saving work even in this moment, without an active moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe?  This is the trust I lack: to know that if disaster strikes, He carries me even there. Trust in the wholeness of the gospel--including this moment, good news too--and be saved. Choose stress, worry, anxiety, reject what God has given now, which is good news too--refuse to trust--and be condemned.

If authentic, saving belief is the act of trusting, then to choose stress is an act of disbelief--atheism.

Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism.

The joy comes when I stop looking at what I have to do and set my gaze on what Christ has done. 

The things that I let steal my joy like worry, stress, anxiety (and don't you know that they are all sin. "Be anxious for nothing..." that's a command) they are evidence that I don't really believe what my lips profess: that God is sovereign and that God is good.  A friend sent me a great article this week and I was reminded that my life is so full. Full of the very best things...

A few years ago, when I just had four children and when the oldest was still three, I loaded them all up to go on a walk. After the final sippy cup had found a place and we were ready to go, my two-year-old turned to me and said, “Wow! You have your hands full!”...

When my little girl told me, “Your hands are full!” I was so thankful that she already knew what my answer would be. It was the same one that I always gave: “Yes they are—full of good things!”

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.

Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.

I didn't even get to finish rereading the article to finish this post before my solitude was interrupted by those two little girls that want to be near me and the sound of a third calling out from her own room.  And even though moments ago I couldn't muster a finger to even grab a blanket to make myself more comfortable, I'm going to rise from this chair and embrace all the good things this house is full of:  the dishes, the laundry, the dolls scattered across the floor.  What one moment can seem an overwhelming burden, when surrendered, when I stop clinging to myself, those burdens become evidences. Evidence of life, of good things, of God's grace, and ultimately evidence of a good God.

Because He is.