Gratitude

Since I organize homeschool ski trips in the Charlotte area, the Ski Mountain Group coordinator contacted me yesterday morning:
"We have snow! When is your group coming?!"
I love to ski, but coordinating the ski trips is not easy. Anyone who has ever coordinated any group activity knows what I am talking about. I replied to the Ski mountain group coordinator that I would arrange it as soon as I could find a date that worked for me.

Then I sighed. Much as I enjoy skiing, I don't do this for me. I do it for my daughter. The group rate is the only way we could ever afford to ski, so I do the hours of work so she can snowboard, which she loves to do.  Most of her friends are in the same boat -- without the homeschool group rate, they can't ski either. So I do this for them too. And then I fill my van with all the kids it can fit and drive the 3 hours each way so they all have this wonderful opportunity. It is a lot of work, and the older I get, the less excited I am about the early morns, the frigid cold, the late evenings, and all the chaos as I get all the tickets, dispense them to the group, get all the kids who traveled with me all their equipment, and then do that long, late night drive home. It takes me an hour or two to get everyone in my group taken care of before I am able to ski, hoping no one under my charge breaks a leg.

Will any of them remember? Will any of them even notice how hard it is and that I do it for them? Will any of them realize that I think they are worth all the trouble or I certainly wouldn't do it?

When I was in NYC, I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is magnificent, though scaffolding blocked its grandeur as it is being renovated. I walked behind the scaffolding to one alcove where no one else was. In the alcove was "La Pieta," the statue by William Ordway Partridge of the nail-scarred body of Jesus sprawled in His mother Mary's lap. I stood there looking at the very life-like marble sculpture and felt all the sorrow of a mother. How Mary must have felt, holding her dead man-child in her arms, seeing His wounds, knowing His suffering!

As I stood there, gazing at the realistic nail holes in His hands and feet, I felt ashamed. Ashamed that I do not thank Him continually for what He did for me. Ashamed that I forget the agony He endured, and am so imperfect, so sinful despite knowing what it cost Him. Ashamed that I don't dare at times to speak of Him to others, knowing I will be rejected. Ashamed that sometimes I don't remember Him, and forget how hard it must have been...and that He did it for me. Ashamed that I take for granted what His mother must have suffered holding her dead child in her arms, and that He knew what terrible pain and grief she would bear.

And yet, the Bible is filled with the verses of His love for us. He knows we forget, but He still loves us, He forgives us, and then he extends to us countless opportunities to remember Him instead. He must think we are worth it, or He wouldn't have done it.

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Romans 5:8 

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:5 

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

2 Peter 3:9 

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Corinthians 6:2 

For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

Jonah 2:1-10 

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head

John 3:17 

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.