climb the watchtower

I keep coming back to this, Adam quietly ferrying gifts out the front door, packing our cars the day we traveled to my parents’ house for our annual family Christmas, how he met me at the foot of the stairs again and again, accepting boxes and baskets from my hands with silent happiness even though he had no idea what could be inside of the packages, nor who would receive and open each gift.  It made me smile, seeing in his face a kind of purposeful joy, a readiness to give and receive, to celebrate, his heart flung wide open like our front door, packed up with grace like Zoe’s car parked out on the curb.

I kept thinking of something I had read that morning in one of my favorite Ann Voskamp books, where she wrote that, “The secret of joy is always a matter of focus”; where she urged,

“The watch tower can be climbed. Stand even now at the guard post; there are gifts.  Count, recount gifts: rejoice, re-joice….A song of thanks steadies everything.”

What a way to start a year, ferrying gifts out the door, packing them with us as we go, ready for counting, for re-membering, for joying again, for opening in the company of love for the glory of Love, always thinking, the paper crinkling in our hands as the bows fall to the floor, grace upon grace.  Grace upon grace upon grace.  Because gifting isn’t only for Christmas, and packages of goodness land in our laps all the time, and songs of thanks shouldn’t fade when the tinsel has been swept away, and Grandma’s turkey platter has been stowed in the attic for another year.  Because we were made to be carriers of grace.

Today, it is a favorite passage from Habakkuk that reminds me, a resolution from a prophet:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

That same passage had been the subject of Ann Voskamp’s essay, the essay I read and received the day Adam ferried gifts out the front door, his long, lean arms reaching to receive blessing, and I had stood on the steps smiling, passing off parcels with silver bows, remembering also what God had said long ago to Abram, I will bless you; I will bless through you.  I had been thinking that this is how it is, that when we come to the end of ourselves and everything looks and feels empty, God fills our arms with blessing that we might be the carrier of blessing from Him, that emptiness is always an illusion for people  who are full of God.

Stand at the guard post and watch.  There are gifts.

This had itself been a gift to me that morning, when I had felt the sharp edges of my own limitations, when I had realized how vulnerable I was, how heart-thin, how poured-out weary. I had prayed in the predawn for grace.  I had seen no buds, no evidence of fruit, only barren fields and empty pens, crooked gates hanging loose on the hinges.  You will smile with me now, maybe, re-membering, the way the last few days before Christmas feel like racing on an empty stomach, how you can feel hungry-lean and carved, how you can long for some kind of restful mercy, or at least to put down the weighted backpack you’ve been carrying on your tired shoulders.  Or, maybe, you’ve been carved out by something that has nothing at all to do with the holidays, and you’re still grimacing against all that weighted empty, and you still, this far into a new year already, can’t see an end in sight.  Sometimes for years we can run down glass-shattered paths, down in the lowlands of grief, seeing nothing but fruitlessness and barren fields, but the advice still holds:  Climb the watchtower.  There are gifts.  Reach out your empty arms to receive.  It’s still true:  God will bless you; God will make you a blessing.  You can set your face with a purposeful kind of joy.  You can count and re-count, rejoice and re-joice.  You can pack your heavy pack with gifts to give away as you go.

We sometimes get it wrong, believing gifts are only a seasonal thing.  There are birthdays, yes, and special days, maybe, and Christmas eventually coming again as a whole new year goes by, and in the meantime, January can feel quite cold and sobering, like a launch into the hibernation of celebration, like a long view of naked, beseeching trees and gray light, the clouds like a blanket thrown over the sun, like a shroud or a thick cocoon.

We can feel downright dismantled.

And yet, Habakkuk declared, “I will re-joice in the Lord; I will be joy-full in God, my Savior,” and I know that the only way this happens is if I climb the watchtower; if I open up my arms to receive.  There are gifts.  God Himself is the gift, and I can acknowledge the lie of lack, that deceptive, carved-out empty, the blankness of tree and vine and field in Winter and still re-joice, still be joy-full in God because I’m full of Him, and what is joy except an awareness of His grace?  He still climbs on down that stairway to heaven, the stairway of His own bared back, just to bring me the gift of Himself, His blessings, His warmth.  Every day is its own Advent, and I can ferry the gift of Him out the door and into the cold—even the air looks cold, and give it away, trusting Him to bless, trusting Him to make me a blessing.

Ann Voskamp wrote it right, that when we feel the careening, a song of thanks always steadies.

Adam loves this job; I could see it that day on His face, that being the bearer of gifts made Him happy, and I felt it too, how the baskets of gifts felt like baskets of leftovers picked up—one full basket for each pair of lean arms—from the grass after Christ multiplied for a crowd what in my hands looked only like one little lunch.  I had heard it that day, like a clear answer to my hungry prayers:  Look.  Look at the gifts!  Feel them, heavy in your arms.  See that your not enough can be a feast for thousands when you return it back to me, that the oil and flour in those nearly empty jars will never actually run out.  So go ahead; go ahead and re-joice.  Go ahead and start counting the gifts.

In the beginning, it feels a lot like being Andrew at the feeding of the 5000, this climbing, this focus that is the secret of joy, like holding five loaves and two fish up to Jesus, saying, well, I’ve got these, but how far will they go, or, like being that widow Elijah went to for bread, saying, I only have a little.  This had been me in the stark early of morning, lifting up my bare hands.  But something opens up wide inside when we start the counting, awkward lifting of our onlies, our incredulous how far will they go, as part of a wonky, off-tune song of thanks.  Suddenly, the pages in the journal fill, or the prayers keep lifting, or the song swells, and we carry gifts off in baskets to the car, feeling emboldened again for the giving, feeling full of God all over again.  But it takes the awkward start, the turning and treading weary-legged to dig up the scant leftovers from our tapped imaginations.  It takes climbing the watchtower to look for the gifts, because how can we pass the blessings if we don’t first feel them heavy in our own arms?

So still now, in mid-January, under that thick, blank sky and the trees all empty-reaching, I think of Adam’s quiet joy, of the celebration playing out on his chiseled face, of his arms full of gifts and him ferrying them out the door to give away, of God blessing us, making us the blessing.  I carry with me into another wide-open, unknown year the re-membering, that on that day when I felt downright hulled out and empty, God filled our arms with gifts, gave me a picture of the truth to confront the lie, and so I start again, today, my voice faltering a little, warbling out an awkward song for a new year, a steadying song of thanks.