What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.

  - Psalm 116.12-14

But what shall I promise to the Lord, since I have no power over anything unless He gives it to me? I greatly desire and am  prepared for Him to grant me that I might drink from His chalice, as He has permitted to others who loved Him.

  - Patrick, Confession (British, 5th century)

This is one of my favorite images of the life of faith: drinking down the salvation of the Lord.

The image in Psalm 116, to which Patrick alludes, is of a man calling for a toast. He raises his glass to honor the host and acknowledge his generosity. By so doing, he invites others to join in praising and honoring him with their share of his largesse. Then they drink his good gifts heartily, draining down the blessings of their host while they devote themselves afresh to their friendship with him.

Just so the life of faith. God lavishes good gifts upon us. He wants us to know a full and abundant life in Christ, in which the joy, peace, and wonder that come from knowing Jesus and participating in Him far surpass any material boon this world might afford. We hold up to the Lord in thanksgiving our acknowledgement of His boundless grace and goodness, encouraging others to join our boasting in the Lord. Then we feast on the Gospel, drinking down the salvation of the Lord until, inebriated with His Spirit, we live in the exhilaration of a power that makes all things wondrous and new.

Is this your experience of the faith? That daily gratitude to the Lord? That celebrating His goodness, boasting of Him to others, calling on others to share in your boasting and in giving Him the honor which is His due? Then feasting on the salvation that is yours in Jesus, so that you grow fat with spiritual abundance, and it overflows from you like rivers of living water to touch the lives of everyone you meet?

This is how Patrick sought to live. It's how God intends for us to live.

It's how you I can live each day, in the increasing fullness of the bottomless Gospel of Christ.

T. M. Moore, Principal

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