Imagine you could add up everything your parents ever gave you over your lifetime, and then imagine you decided you wanted to pay it all back.
There are two problems. The bad news is you’d never be able to add it all up and you’d never be able to pay it all back. The good news is, they loved you and never expected you to pay any of it back.
I was thinking about that very thing during the holidays and realized my sons and my grandchildren have paid us back even more than we’ve ever given them by simply allowing us to give it to them.
We took one of our grandsons after Christmas to buy golf and soccer shoes.
Later that night, Mary Ella and I were talking about how much we’d enjoyed the day, actually being the ones who received the gift that day.
Maybe God feels the same way and we have the same two problems. We’d never be able to add it all up, and we’d never be able to pay it all back. Maybe God loves us and never expects us to pay it back. So Paul writes in Ephesians:
“For it is by grace (a gift we don’t deserve) that you have been saved (forgiven) through faith. And this is not of yourselves (not something you’ve earned), but it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one will boast or take credit in any way.”
— Ephesians 2: 8-9
John Wesley spent the first half of his life trying to repay God for everything God had given him throughout his life. He almost died in a house fire when he was five years old, but neighbors rescued him Then he learned the Ephesians 2.8-9 lesson in the above passage, and he spent the last half of his life, not trying to pay God back, but simply trying to express his gratitude for God’s gifts of life and salvation — and freedom from a life of trying to pay Him back.
A life of “working to please God” or “trying to pay God back” is an impossible burden.
So, my prayer for your 2026 is a life filled with gratitude for God’s gifts of life, salvation and freedom — and for the Spirit’s gifts of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
