All of us have talents that God gave us to help Him to do His work. Some of those talents are a source of joy when we are able to use them. Take me for example. I am a connoisseur of words:

[(n): specialist, authority, expert, enthusiast, aficionado, aficionada, buff]

    One thinks of wine tasters, expert in discerning the value of fermented grape juice. One thinks of the Galloping Gourmet, who cooks and tastes and perfects and tastes again and it is a wonder that he is not three feet thick! And then there is me. Give me a bowl of alphabet soup and I will make words, roll them around on my tongue, breathe their heady fragrance, and call them my own. Not quite good enough for the New York Times or my own word-sipping show, but good enough for me, and my God.

    Even as a child words fascinated me. I would take a friend’s name, for example, “Patty,” and play with it, “Paaa—dee... Paaa...DEE.... PA...dee”... until the name just sounded ridiculous and not at all like my good friend’s name.

    I would also write poems for my family on little pieces of construction paper and place them in hand-made crudely decorated envelopes. Even then, the editor’s work was never done; I was always moving and changing words until they resonated in my head just right. And then move them around some more.

    It was no surprise, then, that I latched onto Latin roots with a vengeance when I hit grade school. Suddenly the dictionary became a valuable tool. Not for definitions or spelling, but for the many different uses and origins of words. I love it when I read a sentence and something about it “bothers me”. When I look up the word in the dictionary, suddenly the sentence has more meaning — perhaps a meaning that was never intended, but I have fun with it!

    Words are fun! Really! Long before my college psychology courses, I learned about the Freudian slip:

[noun: psychologically significant slip of tongue: an accidental mistake, usually the use of the wrong word in a sentence, that is thought to betray somebody’s subconscious preoccupations]

    HOO boy, I just LOVE when that happens! And THEN if you look in the dictionary for alternate meanings of the mistaken word.... ah, you get the idea, anyway... I’m a nut; a word nut!

    Now I was reading from one of HEARTLIGHT’s online subscriptions the other day, and the word “grace” came up, as it often does when reading a Christian publication. But, I got to thinking about that word. Obsessively. Excessively. Non-stop. I thought of that word day and night and day and ...

    Ok ok. I will focus.. Grace. Ok, bear with me. Full of grace, saying grace, saving grace, gracious, “But for the Grace of God There Go I,” “call me Grace” ...

    All right, now maybe that last reference is unfamiliar. When I was a kid, and would stumble over a rock or even my own two feet, from out of nowhere a sibling voice would intone, “Walk much, Grace?” Meaning, of course, that I had not yet mastered the art of being graceful. Nor did I look like Grace Kelly. Ok, maybe Gracie Allen.

    There is a serious side to all this word play. My Lord blessed me with a sense of humor, but there is a time and place for it. Usually, that place is somewhere in my writing. It gives me great joy.

    But there is an even greater joy to be experienced in Ephesians 2:8:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.

...it is the gift of God.

    THE gift of God. You know that huge color TV too big to wrap, adorned with only a bow? Bigger than that. That car with the vanity plate that says “FROM HUN”? Bigger. And it is not something you get by being good, not picking on your sister, or for doing dishes for the fourth time this week. Grace is not something that is earned, it is not something that we deserve, it is God saying, you messed up, and we both know just how much you messed up, but you are forgiven; someone else has already served your sentence, paid your price, and given you His gift of loving and merciful GRACE.

    Too simple?

    Look at this one from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary:

1. Grace: The exercise of love, kindness, mercy, favor; disposition to benefit or serve another; favor bestowed or privilege conferred.

• And if by grace, then is it no more of works. (Romans 11:6)
• My grace is sufficient for thee. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
• Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Romans 5:20)
• By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. (Romans 5:2)