Hammering Grace

A contemporary and admirer of Martin Luther said, “A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”^a When I read this thought, I am surprised because I had never known, and I am sad for all that would have changed if only I had.

Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life — even the hard — is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

I too had read it often, the oft-quoted verse: “And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20 NLT). And I too would nod and say straight-faced, “I’m thankful for everything.” But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life. A lifetime of sermons on “thanks in all things” and the shelves sagging with books on these things and I testify: Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.

Little nails and a steady hammer can rebuild a life.

Eucharisteo precedes the miracle.

I look down at the pen. This pen — this is nothing less than the driving of nails. Nails driving out my habits of discontent and driving in my habit of eucharisteo. I’m hammering in nails to pound out nails, ugly nails that Satan has pierced through the world, my heart. It starts to unfold, light in the dark, a door opening up, how all these years it’s been utterly pointless to try to wrench out the spikes of discontent. Because that habit of discontentment can only be driven out by hammering in one iron sharper. The sleek pin of gratitude.

I hammer.

How much is my tongue, tail of the heart, learning the real language of eucharisteo? I forget Eden and naming and nails, and it all seems just a bit … juvenile. Contrived. This is the whole of the secret learning? I confess, even after all that I’ve seen and tasted and touched, I do scoff. I yearn for the stuff of saints, the hard language, the fluency of thanksgiving in all, even the ugliest and most heartbreaking. I want the very fullest life. I wonder, even just an inkling — is this but a ridiculous experiment? Some days, ones with laundry and kids and dishes in sink, it is hard to think that the insulting ordinariness of this truly teaches the full mystery of the all most important, eucharisteo. It’s so frustratingly common — it’s offensive.

Driving nails into a life always is.

I pick up the journal. Paul had twice said it and I mustn’t forget it. He said he had to learn. And learning requires practice — sometimes even mind-numbing practice. C. S. Lewis said it too, to a man looking for fullest life: “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.”^b It might even be good. So I too can be like our children and the everyday training, memorizing of the Latin paradigms with the practicing chants: amo, amas, amat. The washing machine dings and I light up. This is why I had never really learned the language of “thanks in all things”! Though pastors preached it, I still came home and griped on. I had never practiced. Practiced until it became the second nature, the first skin. Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

Practice, practice, practice. Hammer. Hammer. Hammer.

This training might prove to be the hardest of my life.

It just might save my life.

Lord God, Your Son took the ringing of the hammer and the pounding of the nails to buy my salvation. Right now I offer You up my open hands. Drive out the nails of habitual grumbling with the nails of habitual gratitude. I long to be fixed to You.