I have been thinking about grace. Maybe the grace allotted for today is a daily portion, like these raspberries I picked yesterday morning. They don't last for much longer than one day when stored in a glass container in my refrigerator. 
I picked them as soon as the field opened knowing it would be a very hot day. They were ripe and ready to be taken. 

As I filled my basket I heard several "pops" that the farmer sets off to scare birds away. 

Could it be that God's graces are for just today? Unique spiritual gifts to be taken in, eaten strengthening us for the day's challenges?

And does God work to keep those gifts in perfect condition to give to us, as the farmer works to protect his fruit?

Nehemiah 2:17

Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burnt. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’



Isaiah 26.1:
On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:
We have a strong city;
   he sets up victory
   like walls and bulwarks.


Isaiah 49.16:
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
   your walls are continually before me.


Isaiah 60.18:
Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
   devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
   and your gates Praise.


I have been meditating on the image of ancient walls being rebuilt in order to protect something precious to human life and thus to God or I could say to protect something precious to God and thus to human life and to me.

The image is one that our daughter made of a ruin on the grounds of an organic farm where she lived and worked for most of one week in Italy. To me, it is beautiful, even in its ruinous state. And look at that rabbit inhabiting the space below the altar? How sweet is that?

What are you called to rebuild? What have you experienced in its broken state? Are you called to be a part of the rebuilding of those walls that could one day bring benefit to human kind and glory to God?