I can’t smell fresh cut pine
timber without being carried back in my memory to my childhood, attending my
grandfather’s camp meeting revivals held each August in south Alabama. I
remember the sawdust-shaving floor, the wooden benches, polyester suits and organ
music. Sweaty evangelists preached Christian holiness with a Bible in one hand,
a handkerchief in the other, and great conviction in their soaring voices. And
all those rich images and memories sit down for a visit in my mind each time I
do something as simple as walk through the lumber section at Home Depot.
I can’t cross a bridge over a
small muddy river while driving on the interstate without recalling all the
fishing outings I enjoyed with my friend Bert Deener when I was in high school.
Bert is a fisheries biologist with the state of Georgia, and volunteered as
youth ministry director in our small church. He taught me how to bass fish,
hired me to help him in his small fishing lure business he ran out of his
workshop, and helped guide me through the choppy waters of adolescence. Bert
and I spent many hours together on shallow rivers and mossy ponds in south
Georgia, and just by osmosis, I benefited from his steady commitment to Christ
and his interest in me. So when I see a muddy southern river, if I stop and
look, I can see Bert’s silhouette casting out a line for another soul.
I am so grateful for these
and so many other little icons in my life that remind me of so many gifts I
have received. They are physical symbols, “sacramentals”, that gesture beyond
themselves to something much larger – to the redemptive presence of God that
continues to woo and change me. To think that God continues to use something as
simple as our 5 senses to awaken us to his attentive love?! Maybe that is part
of the beautiful mystery of the incarnation of Christ - that he came to us in
physical ways that we could receive him.
As a Wesleyan brand of
Christian, I believe God’s grace comes reaching into our before we invite it.
God’s love is intrusive, rattling the hollowed chambers of our souls, enabling
us to recognize God’s existence and our need for forgiveness and healing.
Theologians call this kind of grace “prevenient”; the grace that comes before.
God is at work within me and you right now, inviting us into a wonderful future
being prepared for us, and we never even asked for such a gift.
Beginning a few weeks ago, I
can’t smell a pound cake baking in our home without thinking about the little
boy or little girl who will join our family through this adoption process. By
the end of next week, my hard working wife, Kameron, will have baked 59 Pound
Cakes over about 7 weeks, raising almost $2,000 in the process. Our kitchen has
been lined with heavy sacks of flour and sugar, and our refrigerator shelves
are stacked with slabs of butter and cartons of eggs. And wafting seductively
from our oven is a WONDERFUL smell. And as many of our friends and family can
attest, the taste is even better.
But better than the smells
and tastes, is the powerful thought that a child on the other side of the world
has no possible idea that all these pound cakes are being beaten, baked,
purchased and inhaled for them. They have not invited our whole network of our
friends and family all across this country to participate in this cause. They
are simply unaware of everyone who is “preveniently” helping to prepare a safe and
loving new life for him or her.
I hope you can think of some
of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches that cause you to “be still
and know that He is God.” I know, for the rest of my life, every time I smell a
pound cake baking, I won’t be able to help thinking of the grace of God.
We deeply desire to
show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please
be in prayer for all five of us during this journey.
In God’s grace,
Nathan, Kameron, J.
Henry & Amelia (and Baby Number Three!)
