A Month of Gifts: Day Seventeen

Lately, I have been reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. As Kieran enters the last month of his first year, I decided to list some of the gifts we have celebrated since that wonderful March day as a sort of countdown to his very first birthday:

43.  Seeing life through a different perspective. People are big. Dad is a giant. I can't get through that door, on top of that couch, or over that gate. An empty water bottle is my new favorite toy. When you walk out of the room, I can't see you anymore...and I just realized that means I'm all alone. When you pick me up, all of the sudden I can reach things I couldn't reach before--how exciting!

Life is tough when you're small, but it is a gift to be able to get down on a child's level and see life through their eyes. As Ann says:

I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down to get His best gifts.

To receive God's gifts, to live exalted and joy filled, isn't a function of straining higher, harder, doing more, carrying long the burdens of the super-Pharisees or ultra-saints. Receiving God's gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower.