Life has been as full as its ever been, yours too (warm smile)? Thankful doesn’t even capture how glad I am for all of you faithful readers. Your emails/encouragements are a gift to me. I just had to get that off my heart.

I don’t know about you, but surprises are the best! The kind you don’t even expect or see coming, not a holiday or a birthday or occasion, but the “just because” gifts always blow me away. Our kids’ third set of grandparents, as we like to refer to them (laughing smile, they aren’t quite that age yet, but close), surprised our socks off yesterday with this gorgeous custom table my husband Chris and “Tom-cat” {Got to love a good nickname} had been working on. The fullness of these beautiful lives just prevented them from plowing away at it, so Tommy decided to surprise us with the finish product at dinner last night. Not only did I not have to cook dinner, but I went home with a little piece of Restoration Hardware in the back of my van. Yeah, take that in for a minute (hilarious smile).

This morning I sat in front of it with my Bible opened on my lap, even prayed that the table would be a blessing within our home as it holds Bibles and plates and coffee cups. I just thanked the Lord for His kindness demonstrated so plainly right there in front of me. Tommy took a good portion of his day and provided us with this gift. And I just sat there marveling at how the Lord spends a good portion of His time providing for us good and wonderful and beautiful things. He plans the sunrise and in the same day paints the sunset over the horizon, and they are always different. He decides how the stars are organized in the sky and calls them by name? He dazzles us, if we let Him, with His majesty, and He gives us all of this and too many times we don’t even offer a thank you. Too many times, we barely notice, just blazing through life on to the next thing and the next thing until the day is done.

And sometimes we take what was created and make it into the main thing, instead of worshiping our Creator. It occurred to me sitting before our table this morning how quickly we will bow to mortar and brick, to pillows, cars, and stuff instead of bowing our hearts to God, the One gifting us. Don’t think we don’t do it, and don’t think we won’t do it. We consciously fight our flesh, or we are constantly defeated. The default mode for humanity is to focus on the things that are seen rather than the unseen hand of God behind it all.

Then it shall come about when the LORD your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.… Deuteronomy 6:10-12

We are the forgetful. I could admire a table that our dear friend built and fail to thank him. That would be so sad, but what’s eternally more gut-wrenching is that

I could admire the things the Lord provides and fail to worship Him.

We do this thing, this forgetting thing. We are just as guilty as Israel here, but just as the builder has more honor than the house, so our God, the Builder of all things, is the One deserving of every bent knee, every accolade, and every praise. This is the picture I see in the coffee table just gifted to me. This picture of refusing to bow before the created, and only to the Creator who is forever blessed.