The wet grass has frozen overnight and catches the morning sun like glistening jewels. Not the glare of sun reflecting off snow, not yet this winter, not this far south, just sparkling frost. I can’t capture it with the camera. But the sight holds me mesmerized for minutes.

Reflected sunlight. Just little bits of sun in behold-able sparkles. And isn’t God like that? Sometimes He is the glaring sun that makes us shade our eyes and look for a hiding place. But more often, I think, He reveals himself more gently. In the moisture left from the rain, in the chilly weather that allows the plants to rest, in the reflected light, in a sparkle the camera can’t quite catch.

I drink my coffee – beans from the earth, water from the skies. I look out my window – glass made from sand and rocks eroded by the weather. I snuggle into my sweater –an animal’s wooly fleece. I am protected in a house of bricks made from clay. My home is heated by gifts from God’s earth – gas, or coal, or water-generated power.

How accustomed I have become to all God’s gifts, how readily I take them for granted. How rarely I take the moment to thank God for them all.

In the moments I stand and watch, the warming sun steals the glittering frost. As if God’s appearance in this moment was for this moment only and not a thing to be captured and held onto. I want to build a tabernacle to this moment when I saw God in the sparkles in my yard. Perhaps that is what I am doing as I write this.

Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said. Luke 9:33.

But it is not the sparkling grass that I need to admire. Not the sun or the rain, not the coffee beans, the glass, or the sheep’s wool. All these just point to the gracious provision of a loving God. Provision that is not based on my worthiness or even my gratitude, but on His love for me, for you, for all of us.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Luke 9:35.

I turn from the window, refill my coffee cup, and head to the chair beside my Bible. Listen to Him. And isn’t that the real gift? That God gave us Himself in human form, spoke to us in a voice we could hear and understand? I turn to Matthew five and listen to Jesus’ words. Comforting, inspiring, challenging, words which call me know Him, to hear and do.

It’s a new year – 2025 – but these old words are still the ones worth listening to. Jesus’s voice is still the one God tells us to listen to. And His words still carry more life-changing wisdom than the millions of words written since then. I’m not a big resolution maker. God is in charge, and He may have other plans. But I can resolve to listen to God’s Son more. To hear and do.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. Matthew 7:24-25.

Listen to Him.

May God bring you blessings and joy in 2025. May you build your house on the rock and withstand the storms.

Love in Christ, Betsy