Grateful Noticers

In thanks of grace

A fall sunrise at the Link household

Hello friends,

Thanksgiving week is upon us here in the States, and I’m dumbfounded that the end of the year is around the corner. The coming season is busy for all, but I hope this week you find some time to rest and simply enjoy your family and other loved ones. This week’s post is shorter as I seek to do the same, but I do have a few thoughts to share, and I hope it will rouse the giving of thanks for all, whether you celebrate the holiday or not…

Grateful people are noticers.

Isn’t that a lovely truth to consider? Several years ago, I heard someone say this on a podcast and it struck me as profound. I wish I could remember which podcast it was and to whom to attribute the thought, but alas, I cannot. Nonetheless, the idea was especially significant as I had just come out of a prolonged season of ingratitude.

I know I’ve mentioned this briefly before, but in 2016, after a series of painful challenges, I became angry with the Lord and hardened my heart toward Him. And while I never lost faith in God during that season, I certainly doubted His goodness. Ironically, looking back, the main thread I see running through that period is immense kindness on the Lord’s part, kindness and immense grace. While I stewed in the darkness of a bitter heart, questioning His goodness, He simultaneously poured out a multitude of blessings. I just failed to notice.

While thinking about the giving of thanks this week, the idea of being a grateful noticer rose to the surface again, especially in contemplating grace. There may not be anything quite as life-altering, I daresay life-forming, as becoming a person who habitually notices grace.

The working definition of grace from a Christian worldview is God’s unmerited favor. As broken, sinful people, we receive the good gifts of God: forgiveness, favor, provision, and (most stunningly) relationship with Him, when what we deserve is the opposite. It’s a mind-boggling exchange. We bring our dirty rags of unrighteousness to the table, and He brings all that is lovely, pure, and holy. Through Christ’s death, He takes the rags from us and gives us the good and pure instead.

It's easy to recognize grace in regard to salvation, but grace doesn’t stop there. It is a throughline in the Christian’s life, and it is our holy endeavor to become noticers of it, even when (especially when) things aren’t feeling lovely. And while it’s a lesson I’ve learned, it’s certainly not one I’ve mastered.

Even so, as I was thinking about it this week, my various writing projects came to mind. I’ve shared about my fiction work in progress, but I also have three other novel ideas germinating, and all my stories have a strong theme of grace running through them. In fact, I’d say that grace may be the primary theme, though it’s hard to tell completely as most are still in the percolating phase. Either way, I realize that grace has become of utmost importance and beauty to me. God’s unrelenting kindness in seasons past, even in the face of my ingratitude, changed me, and perhaps that’s why grace seems to be prominent, even unconsciously sometimes, in my stories. Oh, to be a writer who pours out the grace of God on the page.

If I’m honest, sometimes it’s still easier to see grace written in other people’s narratives, but I want to be someone who sees the grace of God penned in every sentence, phrase, jot, and tittle of my own story, too. Because it is always present. I know Him enough now to know this as truth, even when I’m not seeing it, not noticing it. 

So, this Thanksgiving, I pray that I will be a grateful noticer, and I pray the same for you. May your feasts be rich, your fellowship richer, and may you notice the grace of God in your midst.

For most surely, it is there.

Tiffany