A New Dawn

There is something about sunrises that bring a measure of peace to my mind these past few days. As I watched the brand new red sun take its place among the clouds from my station on watch I felt at ease with the whole situation and world around me. At that time I had no idea that we would be sailing in 28 hours, and I didn’t care a whole lot though. As the sun rose from its slumber I felt a small fire being stirred in my soul.

At breakfast, I again felt an insurmountable peace with my surroundings and choices in life. This was gained in a somewhat new way to me, which was through conversation with my fellows. The funniest part of the whole situation was that the conversations weren’t about anything special at all, just our lives. It was after this that I decided to go for a walk to the beach to try and catch a glimpse more of God’s glory.

As I approached the beach singing songs of joy and thinking on things that have been in my mind for a while, I caught a quick glimpse of His glory. The beach was laden with ice and most of it frozen al the way through. There were a few different colors involved in the ice, as the thickness differed. This only made the whole scene more beautiful. I walked out to where the ice stopped and just drank the next scene into my soul.

Here is what I observed:

The water was calm and the sound f the sea was in the air. A light sound of waves collided with the silence that surrounded the beach on a cold winter morning. The frozen sand was reflecting the light of a new day as some clouds attempted to ruin the light. The sun proved stronger than the clouds and shone through them, and majesty poured out of the gaps that were in the cloudy covering. The clear horizon was painted a hue of orange and blue, and the edges of the clouds were carefully colored yellow. The sun blazed off of the sea and into normal sight as the light of a new day, a new chance, poured into every corner of my life.

As I looked on with eyes wide a word popped into my head, and with that word a string of words and phrases fell from the sky into my life. “Nothing” was the word that started this string of thinking. If one were to see me at that moment they may have thought I was either crazy, or something funny had happened, but it hadn’t, I was just incredibly happy.

“Everything I’ve done is nothing.” I whispered as I grinned ear to ear.

“All of the stupid things I have done mean nothing.” I laughed as tears welled up in my eyes.

That is grace to me. As we go along in life, we screw up all the time, as I have done plenty, but our God gives us undivided grace in all that we do. He is always there to remind us that, yes it was stupid, but it doesn’t matter! We have been washed clean for such a small price to us, but such a huge price to Him. God reminds us that our freedom is easily within our grasp, and all we need to do is observe the mighty way in which we have been saved. Nothing can hold the grace back from us; nothing.