a Puritan's prayer

A prayer from the Valley of Vision, celebrating Christ. Appropriate. More than appropriate, really. Beautiful.

"The Gift of Gifts"

O Source of all good,

What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,

thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,

my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,

his self-emptying incomprehensible,

his infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:

he came below to raise me above,

was born like me that I might become like him.

Herein is love;

when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace,

to raise me to himself.

Herein is power;

when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart

he united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreate and the created.

Herein is wisdom;

when I was undone, with no will to return to him,

and no intellect to devise recovery,

he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,

as man to die my death,

to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,

to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind;

let me hear good tidings of great joy,

and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,

my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,

my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;

place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,

to look with them upon my redeemer's face,

and in him account myself delivered from sin;

let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart,

embrace him with undying faith,

exulting that he is mine and I am his.

In him thou hast given me so much that heaven can give me no more.

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."

remembering

Whenever I come home, my heart aches with all of the memories I have here. Aches in a good way, I mean. The beautiful thing about having known a house, and a land, for twenty three years, is that you begin to feel the life pulsing through it. Your mind is simply absorbed with living history.

Like sitting on the stone hearth of the open fireplace with a good book, entirely too close to the flames, but too consumed with the story to think about moving away. And while doing so, remembering all the times before, when you sat in the exact same spot as a girl, fresh out of the bath with still-wet hair, and your parents telling you to move back because your skin will dry out. And living in the midst of that memory, starting at the creak in the floor, forgetting that your parents consider you too old for that advice now. Except they give it anyways.

Or like walking through the pasture, remembering all its stages of life, and how they seemed to fit perfectly with your own. Remembering the fort your sister and you played in, pretending to be the boxcar children. Remembering riding through the pasture, bareback, living in the midst of a girl's imagination of far off lands and peoples. Remembering taking naps in the tall grass, trusting that the grazing horses were smart enough not to trample you while you dreamed. Remembering the changes in trees, even, and seeing their growth from seeds to pines much taller than people. And recalling the planting of new ones, when the horses were passed and the new tractor was almost Dad's toy.

Or knowing the house itself, every scratch in the paint on the front doors, every creaky spot in the hardwood floors, each window that's harder to open than the rest, each key in the piano that no longer works. (And remembering each missing ivory covering, and every time you popped one off out of frustration, and the ensuing guilt and desperate attempt to hide the obvious...)

Or like remembering all the holidays. The time when your sister baked the annual Thanksgiving pecan pie, but pulled it out of the oven too early. When she held it up to show everyone, and all the filling came out right where the whole pecans formed the smile, making the pie look as though it were regurgitating its own insides. Or all the Christmas Eves that slowly turned into Christmas mornings, playing under the pillows because you couldn't sleep from excitement. And finally being allowed to get up and see what Santa had brought, and, as you grew up a little, bringing coffee in to your parents to wake them up, trying to remember to not to say thank you, because you were still supposed to think Santa had brought all those gifts... And finally, growing up even more, remembering when you and your sister sat up late on Christmas Eve, reading the Christmas story from the Bible, only barely beginning to understand what it really meant. And the introduction of a brother-in-law to all these traditions. And then a niece. And now a nephew.

Memories are such powerful things. I love them. I love thinking about the history even of my small family. I love remembering how I grew up, and I love the possibility that someday, I'll get to share these memories with someone else. I love the history that is contained in this house, this land...this home.