Meditations on a fine, cloudy morning

I WAKE up to a cloudy morning—a little cold but not hot, like most mornings the past months. It rained last night. The soil has been dry, the air extremely humid, and the people irritable—we needed the rain. The room is dark and quiet, save for the clickety-clack I make on my keyboard. I haven't drawn my curtains yet. In a few minutes I will head to the bathroom, don my stethoscope, and make rounds. I have a few ECGs to read, too, so I mustn't forget that.

It is a fine morning because I know that Auntie Cecille, my mother's best friend, practically a second mother to us, has been discharged from the hospital after her neck surgery. Her thyroid was removed completely because a mass has been growing there for the past months—not too bothersome, but enough to capture attention. I looked after her while I was on duty at the Pay Floors. It was a weird feeling, and I dreaded the possibility of receiving an SMS referral from her nurse. There is a sense in which doctors shouldn't care for their ill kin (she's almost family); they may get too emotional. But everything went well. Praise God.

It is a fine morning, too, because the fact remains: that God is ruler of all. He is in control of everything, of all my circumstances. He has redeemed me through His Son Jesus Christ. He has given me new life, and this life I live for Him (Galatians 2:20).

There are too many things to be thankful to God for. It is a fine morning, a wonderful morning, indeed.

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I'M SHARING an excerpt from Austin Farrer's “Assurance,” preached at Pusey House Chapel, Oxford and collected in Said or Sung (1960).

He assures me, God assures me, partly through my mind, as when I reconsider the manger and the cross, the words and the works, the sepulchre and the throne of Jesus, and see that they are divine. But he assures me also in my life, through his dealings with me; for he gives me grace. Yes, he gives me grace; and though I spill the water of life on the ground before his very eyes, not even putting the cup to my lips, he forgives me, and gives me more. As those who cannot love through the meanness and distrustfulness of their minds cease to be able to believe in the love which others bear them, so the despite we do to God’s grace destroys our knowledge of it. How do I know that I have found him? Not, heaven knows, because I cannot sin: the nearness of his grace, and the dearness of his love, offer me opportunities for sinning such as I had not when he was further removed; for now I can throw his mercy in his very face. But there is a grace beyond grace, a grace mastering the contempt of grace, the grace of repentance, to which he recalls me; and thus indeed I know, not that I have found him, but that I have been found by him.