Happy Holy Days
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Grace is amazing. The word itself amazes, fitting so many shades of meaning into such a tiny word. We use the word to describe a sense of gentility, as we would speak of the grace found in a fine southern gentle lady. We use the word to describe that time period that falls between when our bills are due and when those we owe start to call us names. We use the word to describe the common ritual (and I use the term ritual not in any pejorative sense) we go through before we eat our meals. And then of course is the most amazing grace of all, the showering of God's favor upon His children who deserve nothing of the sort. Here the word falls infinitely short of being able to contain the thing signified.

Perhaps, however, its very greatness is its very weakness. Because grace means so much it can and often does come to mean so little. Whether we are speaking of God's particular grace, or His common grace, too often it seems too common. We become like fish in water, too immersed to notice that it is all around us. We've grown accustomed to His grace, and so take it and Him for granted.

A table grace exists, in part, to help alleviate the problem. We are presented with bounty. We think it got there because of all our hard work, or because of the booming economy, or more likely, just because it is supposed to be there. It's there every day, after all. But we stop, and remember that none of the above is so. We remember that the food is there because God has graciously provided it for us. And once a year we have a particularly large feast, not so the men can watch a great deal of football, but to remember that God has been gracious to us throughout the year. But even this liturgy can become rote to us. We gather together, and forget what we are gathered for. We're too busy worrying about basting the turkey, and cooking the yams that our holy day, our celebration of the Lord's provision, becomes just another job, another occasion to grumble about all the work we do.

We don't come to this feast either as our fathers did. We are not running out of last year's provision, scraping the bottom of the barrel and waiting and hoping that the crop will ripen, and that it will be full. Instead we come to this feast full from the meal we ate just a few hours before. We are provided for richly day in and day out, and so have a famine of gratitude for the grace.

The Scripture tells us that this failure of gratitude is at the heart of the sins of men. Paul, in addressing the church at Rome says of the unregenerate, "For though they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him" (Romans 1: 21). We, however, are regenerate. We should therefore be marked as a people consumed with worship, and with gratitude. But our old man is still kicking, and so gratitude is still a problem.

That's why God has given us liturgies, as an aid to remembering. Whether it is the feast of weeks in the old covenant, or the weekly feast in the new covenant, we are to gather together to give thanks. We are to remember and to recite together the great deeds of God in our lives, and in the lives of our fathers. We are to take the time to be satisfied in Him, and in His provision That we turn these memory aids into an excuse for forgetting, that we take for granted not only the grace, but the gracious reminder of the grace is no excuse to forget the reminder. We don't, lest it become too familiar, avoid taking the time to give thanks. Rather, lest the grace become too familiar, we take the time to give thanks.

We must give thanks daily. We must recognize that each day is a gift from God. That we are not suffering His eternal wrath, which is what we daily deserve, ought to set our hearts to singing. That we are alive ought to surprise us. That we are not only alive, but blessed in countless ways ought to astonish us. "This is the day that the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it" the Psalmist declares to the congregation. Every day is a holy day, because it was made by a holy God. Our response is this, to follow our duty, and to rejoice. The returning of thanks is not to be a chore, but a cause for celebration.

About ten years ago an economist whose name escapes me wrote a best-selling book titled Unlimited Wealth. This was not the typical gloom that comes from the pens of professors in what has been called the dismal science. The author was rather optimistic about our economic future, which, I believe, was rather foolish. But I was reminded of something terribly important in reading the book. While there certainly is such a thing as absolute poverty, most of what we experience is merely relative poverty. Absolute poverty is that which causes starvation. Relative poverty merely causes relative privation. He explained that much of the gloom and doom that has come from the economists is not really the result of a stagnant economy, but of a culture in which our desires have outpaced our ability to meet them. That is, we feel poor not because we are poor, but because we're not as rich as we would like to be. Because we can imagine having more, we think we're suffering for not having it. He illustrated the point with homes. Everyone knows how horrible it is that young couples have such a hard time purchasing their first home. This is supposed to be a sign that something is wrong with the economy. What is left out of the equation is what kind of home young homebuyers are typically trying to buy. The average home today is twice the size of the average home just fifty years ago. When the last generation did manage to buy a home, they filled it with matchstick furniture. We take the plastic down to Ethan Allan and lug home the debt on our backs. The average home fifty years ago had one television, if any. Today the average is closer to three than two. It's not the economy stupid, it's our acquisitiveness. We want more, and we want it now.

Such not only fails to cultivate a grateful heart, but it creates resentful hearts. We tell ourselves we're not greedy, we just want what's "normal." And normal is defined as the next step up, wherever we are on the economic scale. Are we amazed that most of us, every day, sometimes twice a day, can take a nice warm shower, without giving a thought to the cost? I remember being allowed to run through the house when I was a boy, but only when it was that most special of occasions, when someone was calling long distance, and I had to fetch a parent. Now we ask the caller from across the country to hang on a second while we finish vacuuming the rug. And when the pinch comes at the end of the month we grumble to our spouse, or worse to God.

The good news is that we can, indeed we must, turn this all upside down. God is not commanding us to rejoice in our want, but to rejoice in His bountiful provision. If we really understood what is due to us, how can we do anything but celebrate in the presence of such bounty? It is true of our economic lives, our spiritual lives, all of our lives. Can I imagine having more? Of course I can. Can I imagine being owed more? Not on your life. Even in the midst of absolute poverty, if our stomachs are swelled not from the bounty but from the want, we have Jesus. This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

That's part of what it means to live a simple life. It doesn't mean giving up the finer things in life.
In fact it means learning to recognize the finer things in life. Our problem, as C.S. Lewis has argued, is not that we are too hard to satisfy, but that we are too easy to satisfy. We'd rather play in the gutter than come to the Master's feast. It doesn't mean treating the bounty of God as if it were some sort of infectious disease. I'm not arguing that it is bad to have things, even nice things. I am saying that our expectations are to be simple. Our lives are not set on getting the newest and greatest thing. Our eyes are not set on the blessings of our neighbors, nor our teeth set on edge with envy. This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

When we live our days as the holy days that they are, then we will live our days in a holy way, set apart, distinct, and separate. That means our priorities are not the world's priorities. It means that while the world is despairing over its perceived wants, we are rejoicing in our actual blessings. It means that we measure our blessings on the Almighty's scales. It means that we delight in the truth that our cup runneth over, even when we are eating beans again. We are not like them. We have been born again. We are Kings and Queens. We have Jesus. This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

We are deliberate, not only in our doing, but in our thinking. We recognize that our perceptions of the good life, of normalcy, or prosperity are to come not from the television, but from the Word of God. We refuse the lie that says that the good life is measured by the horsepower in our car, or the limit on our credit card. These are the very lies of the devil that rob us of our joy, and turn our hearts from gratitude. As such, they are the very ideas with which we war. This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

We do not go about our daily labors as the world does, either to acquire the cash to buy the happiness, or to acquire the cash to pay down the debt we acquired when we last tried to buy happiness. We are not debt slaves, but neither are we our own. We have been bought with a price, and so drafted into the Lord's army. Our labors are our calling to exercise dominion over God's creation, as servants of the King of Kings. We labor, wherever we labor, for the glory of God and the building of His kingdom. Isn't that cause to rejoice? Our labor as meaning, eternal meaning. We have waiting for us an eternal reward that is greater than our capacity to even imagine. And in the meantime, we have families and friends and pleasures and delights and comforts. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

When we recognize that all our days are holy days, then we daily feast before the Lord. Resentment, disappointment, frustration, envy, all are banished from this feast. God has been gracious, and He always will be gracious; we move through our lives from grace to grace, from blessing to blessing. And there is still more. When we forget to give thanks, when we forget to rejoice before the Lord, when we forget His amazing grace, amazingly, He will forgive. His grace covers even our forgetting of His grace, as in Christ He forgets our forgetfulness. If you are despairing instead of rejoicing, do not despair, but repent, and rejoice. Thank Him for His grace in reminding you of His grace. Don't wait. Don't consider it. Do it now, because this is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.