Pilgrims Enlighten the Dawn Lands
400th Anniversary of the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving with the Wampanoags
by Ralph Blair
(PDF version available here)
After surviving the dreadful storms of their Atlantic crossing, The Mayflower’s Pilgrims were swept to a safe harbor far to the north of their expected landfall in Virginia. It was just in time to shelter for a brutal winter on ground that Natives called, “the dawn lands”, where, every morning, the sunshine came rising from the horizon.
“Dawn Lands” quite aptly describes this stage of their ongoing journey, or Pilgrimage, though folks tend to think of the Pilgrims’ Cape Cod arrival as their destination, albeit not that Mayflower captain’s intended landfall. But neither here, nor down there on Virginia’s coast, was their truly ordained destination, for they’d always understood that they were on the Truest Pilgrimage, as “strangers and pilgrims” here, on this earthly sojourn, headed to their Heavenly Home. As their governor, William Bradford, put it: “They knew that they were pilgrims and looked not much on these things here; but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country.” Temporary shelter in New England was but an escape from oppressive Old England. Higher Rescue lay ahead, above.
That they were now in what were called the “dawn lands”, must have reminded them that they were still “on their way”, with further pilgrimage ahead – not necessarily westward, but ever Upward, prior to the inevitable twilight, dusk and the final setting of that sun that rose in these dawn lands every morning, and to the Coming of the Son of Glory over the darkness of this world for that great and everlastingly liberating Dawning of God’s Truely New Day!
In the meantime, they’d enlighten these Natives with blessings of God’s Word and the Light of Christ’s Love, and in that process, too, they’d contribute to the inspiring of a vision for an amazingly new nation here on the North American continent, to be founded and established to so honestly champion liberty and justice for all.
Can we Christians, here and now, relate to life as an ongoing Pilgrimage in a lost and hostile world that openly resents serious commitment to Christ? Jesus alerted his true followers to expect such hostility and not hospitality. And so, we, too, must expect it.
But, do we? Or, expecting it, do we camouflage our testimony? Plenty of Christians around the world are the victims of far more hostility on an everyday basis. They’re literally being slaughtered.
Here in America, the prejudice and the persecution are usually not expressed in physical or deadly violence. But all of the woke prejudice and the “cancel culture”, especially in academia, by Big Tech, and in society’s socially-consecrated secularism, is routine.
So, as Jesus explained, and candidly warned his true followers:
"If the world hates you, you should realize that it hated me before it hated you. If you held to the basic common ground of this world’s priorities, this world would love you as its own. But you don't have basic common ground with this world’s priorities. I chose to bring you out of this world, and that's why this world hates you. Remember, as I’ve told you: 'A servant isn’t greater than his master.' So, if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they did what I taught, they would also do what you say. Indeed, they resent you because you are committed to me. They don't know the One who sent me.
“Had I not come and spoken to them they would have an excuse. But now, they have no excuse. Anyone who hates me, hates my Father, too. If I hadn't done among them what nobody else has done, they would not be responsible for their sin. But now, they have seen what I have done, and they hate me, and hate my Father, too. (John 15:18ff)
But, besides such negative responses, hatred and persecution that’s to be expected from this fallen world, we must not fail to discern that, if we don’t get such negative responses and such hostility, it’s probably because our Christian witness isn’t clearly apparent. Perhaps it’s even absent. And whose fault is that?
We don’t have to go out of our way to be obnoxious in order to get negative feedback, but we need to be careful that what is so judged as obnoxious is Christ’s Good News and not our own self-righteousness which is certainly no “testimony” at all, for Christ.
Well, even before these Pilgrims had disembarked from The Mayflower, they drafted a remarkable document to govern their close-knit community here in these new “dawn lands”. In their Mayflower Compact, they agreed to form a “civil body politic” of “just and equal laws” based on the consent of the governed and dedicated to the “Glory of God” and to the “general good of the colony.” After signing this Compact, these grateful signatories conducted a democratic election and chose their first governor.
And, appropriately, in these “dawn lands” in the 17th Century, their Compact, in its fewer than 200 words, foreshadowed basic principles of The Declaration of Independence – that was also a declaring of independence from English overlords – and The Constitution of over a century later, with, faith in God, humanity’s natural equality, government by consent, and by the rule of law.
So, it’s no wonder that John Adams would later refer back to The Mayflower Compact, and to these Pilgrims’ arrival in these “dawn lands”, as, the real “birth-day of your nation.” And Daniel Webster agreed, declaring that it truly was there, that “the first scene of our history was laid”, in that “dawn’s early light!”, there!
Upon going ashore, according to Bradford’s own journal, they all “fell on their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean.”
So, going back, 400 years now, to 1621, we’re there, and we are, as it were, in a promising embryo of our land of freedom, in that refugee encampment, there in those “dawn lands”, at the dawning of America’s early experiment in liberty and justice for all.
As the Natives witnessed back then, that same sun is still rising every morning, now over Massachusetts, the Algonquian-based name of this, the sixth state of these United States of America.
Five years before the Pilgrims’ arrived, local Natives were struck by severe plague that left a less threatening populace than might otherwise have been encountered by the Pilgrims on their arrival.
Still, and for all, this was to be a “sad and lamentable” season of disease, starvation, and death. Half of the Pilgrims died in this very first winter, from the consequences of their Atlantic voyage, and from the harsh weather right there. The Pilgrims called this winter, “the starving time”. There were seldom more than six or so who had enough strength to care for all of the sick, or provide food and shelter, and otherwise protect their little settlement.
Then, on March 16, four months after landing and building some huts, they had their first up-close encounter with a Native, and it came as a real shock to them for it was, Samoset, a sagamore, i.e., a subordinate chief, who so casually strolled into their colony and greeted them in English! Whoa! Then, their second shock was when he asked them for a beer! A beer? Well, they soon learned that Samoset learned English and his taste for beer from English fishermen who’d been coming into this Cape for decades.
Samoset stayed with them overnight. He later returned with five other Natives with pelts to trade. On March 22, Samoset came back with his good friend, Squanto, who’d been kidnapped in 1614 by an English sea captain. Squanto learned English from monks overseas. When he’d been brought back to his native land, he learned that his entire Patuxet tribe had died of plague.
Since Squanto’s English was much better than Samoset’s, he and the Pilgrims were even better able to communicate. Squanto also became a translator for the Pilgrims with other Native tribes.
The Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, had good reasons to form a strong alliance with the Pilgrims, and Squanto helped to facilitate their mutual-aid treaty that would then last for over half a century.
Squanto remained with the Pilgrims as their interpreter and, in Bradford’s words, he was “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectations.” Squanto instructed them on cultivation of native crops such as corn, squash, and beans. He also showed them where and how best to fish and hunt game.
We’ve all heard of what came next, right? It was, “The First Thanksgiving”? Both Pilgrims and Natives had survived on good harvests, so a grateful three-day feast was enjoyed by both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags in happily celebrating together.
Such harvest feasts, in one form or another, were and are quite common to Native Americans, to the English and with people groups across history and around the world. All are so glad and grateful to celebrate good harvests, thankful to whatever deities they praise for their good fortune! Isn’t it quite understandable?
Well, leave it to an atheist like Ayn Rand, to rationalize just who should be thanked at Thanksgiving. As she argued: “In spite of its religious form, its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of a successful production. It is a producer’s holiday.” Me! Me?
Nowadays, of that Pilgrims thanksgiving with the Wampanoags, the self-appointed virtue signaling elite complain that those pretty pictures of that 1621 Thanksgiving don’t depict the festivity as a camera would have recorded the event. Really!? And, so what!? And, just who’s seen all of those original photos to the contrary?
The anti-Christian woke mobs, so quick to stumble over un-PC interracial intersectionality, are even quicker to mock that 1621’s communal thanksgiving as “whiteness-dominated racism”. But truly awake, well-informed historians spam that woke spin as a scam. They’re fully aware of the relief that was experienced by both Natives and Pilgrims in these fine harvests, i.e., survival! As to who was host and who was guest, there was no distinction. Natives and Pilgrims shared their plenty in common gratitude.
In 2017, The New York Times, in its blatantly bloated headline warned: “Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong”, although, the author, herself, was quite modest. She simply said that, some of the familiar story is, “not exactly accurate”, as she noted, e.g., “There were no sweet potatoes in North America at the time.” Really?!! Well now, that does “prove” the point of that hostile headline in that so-ever-pompous “newspaper of record”!
Nikole Hannah-Jones of the Times’ terribly flawed 1619 Project, tried to defend herself with wise-cracks against the many eminent historians’ many major objections to her Project’s propagandizing. One of her own bloopers of self-defense was: “Imagine calling the 1619 Project debunked in order to defend a childish Thanksgiving myth.” [For my review of her seriously flawed 1619 Project, with many quotations from these many reputable historians who made mincemeat of its accusations against the Pilgrims, see EC’s 2020 keynote, “The Meanings of Words and the Word of All Meaning”, (particularly pp 53ff, on our EC website.]
Unlike other Europeans who settled here, the Pilgrims were, as John Adams later noted, neither adventurers nor traders nor were they after “avarice and ambition”, but they were “under the single inspiration of conscience”, seeking freedom for the Christian faith without persecution from governmental/ecclesiastical hierarchies.
Contrary to woke narratives now, the authentic historical records document that the Pilgrims were against racism, not supportive of it. As they, themselves, were escaping terrible tyranny, they very much valued individual rights with no prejudice, and freedom and self-government, and these values were then passed down to our nation’s Founding Fathers in their escaping from British tyranny.
Slavery has been in this fallen world of ours all through history, described in all of the world’s ancient texts and it’s still spreading mass misery through enslavement and human trafficking.
Slavery was indigenous on both of the American continents for generations beyond counting. And, from ancient Persia, China, Mongolia, Japan and Arabia, it was a basic fact of life, as it was in the Native American tribes who enslaved other Native American tribes, or, were, themselves, enslaved by more powerful tribes of Native Americans. Choctaw enslaved Cherokee and Choccuma. Pima enslaved Apache and Yuma. Pueblo kept their enslaved for food, as well as forced labor. Huron peddled slaves to Outauac. The Sauk and Ottawa enslaved the Missouri, Osage, Mandan, and Pawnee. “Pawnee” was even a synonym for “slave”! This list only begins to reference all of the indigenous American tribes that enslaved other indigenous American tribes, or, were enslaved by other indigenous American tribes – often as plunder in intertribal warfare. Native Americans continued to enslave each other, even after the founding of these United States of America in 1776.
So, slavery clearly had been here on this continent long before 1526, when the Spanish explorers brought a hundred or so slaves to a settlement somewhere in what much later became South Carolina or Georgia. But, in just a short while, these subjugated revolted and then they disappeared without a recorded trace.
The 1619 Project erroneously claims that America was “founded in slavery” in Virginia in 1619. But, even Captain John Smith, the noted, knighted English explorer who, from 1607, was a leader at Jamestown, in Virginia, had, himself, been a slave of the Turks.
These Arab slavers were notorious for their capturing isolated peasants who lived on the European coasts of the Mediterranean, as well as natives all around the Indian Ocean and Western and Central Asia and on Africa’s shores. They’d engaged in this for centuries, even on into the early 20th century. Muslims had, from their beginning, bought African slaves from rival African tribes.
Smith, himself, was captured by Powhatan, the Great Chief of the Algonquians, who’d planned to bring Jamestown under his dominion. He’d even sent his own scout to England to spy out his chances for bringing England under his Algonquian rule. He later settled for his idea to hopefully combine his power with Smith’s to control his own neighboring tribal enemies. But it didn’t work out.
Today, millions of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, are under cruel control in totalitarian Communist China’s “re-education” camps for brainwashing and slave labor. Extensive data show that they’re forced to make high-end products to be sold to the woke elite in America and elsewhere, by the virtue-signaling woke Apple, Nike, Adidas, etc. But, under President Trump, the importation of these products of these slave-camps in China was banned in the USA.
So, it’s not surprising that the Chinese Communist state-run media promote the 1619 Project to shift blame from themselves. Nor is it surprising that China’s training school texts falsely teach that Jesus actually stoned to death, that woman accused of adultery in the Bible. (John 7:53 – 8;11) It’s an obvious attempt to destroy Jesus’ credibility with China’s persecuted Christians so that they’ll be more pliant to the Communist regime’s rampant use of capital punishment against Christians who don’t bend over to the whims of China’s evil Marxist dictator with that frozen smirk.
So, the worldwide phenomenon of slavery didn’t need “white Europeans” to introduce it to North America or anywhere else on earth. As in all Native American slavery customs, it’s been the case on the African continent, where African tribes enslaved other tribes of Africans and others, Asians enslaved other Asians and others, etc. And Egypt, you remember, enslaved the Israelites.
Black Africa today, according to the Global Slavery Index, still holds the world’s highest rate of enslavement and forced labor.
Slavery’s dismantlement, so far as it’s been achieved, both here in America in the past, and all around the world today, has been and is being accomplished by whites, mainly, whose antislavery views were informed by the whole Judeo-Christian heritage. This is the basic truth of slavery’s abolition. That, that earliest abolition movement to free black slaves was initiated by and very largely accomplished by whites rightfully and quite clearly contradicts all the racist propaganda of the CRT woke today. But, to take any truthful note of these accurate historical facts will automatically put the truthteller under enslavement by the politically correct and woke, cancel culture in the elitist media, academia and Big Tech.
Both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were taken very seriously and applied for living at peace with all others, without distinction of race or ethnicity. It was as a serious Christian, that William Wilberforce broke the British slave trade of African slave traders selling fellow Africans into slavery. Among all those early antislavery supporters were the Methodist founders, John and Charles Wesley, William Cowper with his movingly anti-slavery poetry and his very best friend, former slave ship captain John Newton, who, after his conversion to Christ, wrote his greatly beloved hymn, “Amazing Grace …that saved a wretch like me.”
Constitutional historian Paul Moreno reminds us that, “When [the former slave] Frederick Douglass read the Constitution and came to understand it in its historical context and its background, understanding the political philosophy behind the Constitution”, he clearly saw that, “the Constitution was actually a glorious liberty document and that there was no problem of dealing with slavery under the Constitution, so you could preserve the Constitution and preserve the Union. The best way to get rid of slavery was by constitutional, not by revolutionary means.”
During the Civil War, 364,511 white American men were killed and 281,881 additional white American men were wounded when they, as Union soldiers, went to war against other white American men to end the enslavement of black men and black women in the South. That’s a loss of 646,392 white Union soldiers so that 3.9 million blacks could be freed from slavery under other whites.
But CRT woke crowds today push lies that America is and was always systemically racist against black folk. Indeed, CRT tutors insist that “whiteness”, itself, is intrinsically racist. The woke Left need to learn accurate history and need, then, to be honest. But don’t hold your breath for their admitting any of their own racism.
Against the 1619 Project’s spin on slavery, University of Texas sociologist, John Sibley Butler, who is, himself, black, points to the “black bourgeoisie”, thriving communities of former slaves in the North and the South following the Civil War. He says that these freed blacks “created business enclaves that stood at the center of their mission of economic opportunity and education.”
This work for racial equality was joined by later Christians to end racial segregation in America. It was given eloquent voice by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s declaring: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” For saying so, he’s now mocked by the racist woke.
I so well remember where I was when I heard Dr. King give his “I Have a Dream” speech at that March on Washington, at the Lincoln Memorial, on August 28, 1963. I’d just flown back to Los Angeles to resume my graduate studies at USC and I heard his speech on the radio in my roommate’s car at a local gas station.
Even before those Civil Rights laws of the mid-20th Century, the intact black middle-class families in America often succeeded far beyond the whites who refused, as these blacks did not refuse, to remain together as families, to stress the importance of books and school, getting jobs and staying out of trouble. Sadly, those wise ideals have been trashed as “acting white” among many blacks.
I recognize these much earlier black families who’d only later be insulted for “acting white”. Such black families lived in my own middle-class neighborhood during all of my childhood in the 1940s and early-to-mid-1950s. Two parent families (whether black or white) with well-reared sons and daughters who were serious fellow students, were not into gangs or drugs, and were all aiming for jobs or college after high school.
The founding of these United States in 1776 was never for the championing of slavery. It wasn’t for the triumph of “White Supremacy”. But there was plenty to do, including the War of Revolutionary for freedom from England and all of its aftermath. The framers of our Constitution aimed at independence, limited self-government and freedom for all, as they saw that freedom for all was the revealed will of God. Even back then, they anticipated the inevitable demise of slavery here, but they saw no way to achieve that goal among the conflicting colonies at the time.
The sooner America comes to terms with all of its history — the good, bad, and ugly — without demonizing folks who’re living now for whatever were the sins of generations now long dead, (e.g. the Old South’s racist gentry who founded what’s now the New York Times) the sooner we can move on to the hard, but honest job of team work, for making our union ever so much better.
Christian theologian Miroslav Volf expounds on ages-old self-righteous rivalries and rationalized discrimination between “us” and “them”, tracing it back to Cain and Abel. Such divisiveness rationalizes slavery as it did in Cain’s own evil against his brother.
From then on, in Volf’s view, “this has been the foundation of conflicts, this rivalry between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. The dehumanizing, belittling and killing of our ‘brothers’, are all manifestations of this malady. The characters and scenes change, but the script outline remains the same: ‘Your existence threatens my identity. Now, with racism, ‘the beast’ enjoys a hearty banquet.”
Volf goes on to observe: “It seems to me that [racism] embodies some of the most extreme forms of exclusion; and exclusion that has been both in the individual hearts of people, but that has been baked into history, so to speak.” He discerns that, sin, “is also a very personal thing”, and he posits that, laws are not enough. “The legal system allows for order… and for the most part the absence of violence. But peace, shalom … true reconciliation … that requires the help of a Higher Power … one that has already defeated the beast.”
That great Christian poet of paradox and ironies, John Donne, observed the self-contradictory mentalities of “us” versus “them” in the age of the Puritans when he penned: “No man is an Island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Too often and so sadly, so counterproductively, the only tolled bells that grab the attention of this or that tribe are the bells that toll in a tribe’s own bell-tower.
Among the Pilgrims’ significant assumptions, was the biblical doctrine of self-evidently pervasive “original sin”, i.e., we are all inclined to self-centeredness as fallen humans, and our only hope is, not in ourselves, but in God, our loving Creator and Redeemer.
As historian Susan Hanssen wisely notes, the “conviction of the total depravity of man and the impossibility of building here any heavenly city” kept Pilgrims’ focus on an eventually eternal Home. In the meantime, since humans do tend to be so self-centered and selfish, as individuals and as identity groups that try to wield power over all others, the widest distribution of power must be provided, so that there are always plenty of checks and balances.
These basic ideas were then imbedded in the very assumptions that were vital in the eventual founding of these United States of America. Various provisions of protection for individual rights in America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights exhibit such assumptions with all necessary counterbalancing for sufficient preparedness.
The Pilgrims knew that sin is what restricts freedom, for Jesus had so clearly stated, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34). Sin always enslaves! In a climate of rampaging and selfish violence, crimes, and threats, no one is, or can be, free. No one!
We’re fallen human beings, and so, in need of self-government. This term was not, at first, a political term, but a moral term: the ability to govern oneself; to well control one’s own thoughts and behavior. This comes, in a limited way, by external disciplines, as well as by a fundamental, character-forming, heart’s commitment.
But, ultimately, it comes from the inner transformation of the Gospel. After Jesus explained how sin makes us slaves, he told us how we can be freed: “If the Son sets you free, you’ll be, free indeed” (John 8:36). Moral self-government, might, then, lead to a community-wide adoption in sociopolitical self-government.
Hanssen discusses how John Adams, as a Founder of America and as our second President, repeatedly warned about the sinful proclivities of tyrants as well as the sinful proclivities of those who would try to overthrow the tyrants. Adams fervently cautioned: “My opinion is, and always has been, that absolute power intoxicates alike, despots, monarchs, aristocrats, and democrats, and Jacobins, and also [‘those without breeches’, so to speak].”
Hanssen quotes Adams saying: “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion”. That’s a sobering reality for these secularist days in which we now live. Hanssen notes that Adams warned that, “avarice, ambition, and revenge would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” That warning is, indeed, sobering in our national culture in 2021.
Former slave, Frederick Douglass, agreed: “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”
Their soundly sober warnings, are unnoted in today’s state-sponsored “religion” of self-segregating, self-righteous identity politics in which all must conform to dictatorial powers, especially if it’s all, so gussied up, as “multiculturalism”, “intersectionality”, and something so racist as so-called, “critical race theory”.
We still hold to a sort of E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one”, but the crucial questions must be: What does that, “many”, mean; what’s the definition of that, “one”? Our one very basic value has been, thankfully: “Liberty and Justice for All”. But that’s now being twisted into a depressingly dangerous disintegrating choice: “Be politically correct or be cancelled!”, “Be woke or be broke!” “Your race gives you no place in this discussion, so, shut up! Conform!” Such are the dictated “choices” that are presented to us today. It takes rigorously informed awareness, a very good understanding of history and of rational thought to truly grasp the magnitude of these current Fascist fallacies and Marxist misconceptions that have killed and keep killing multiplied millions under their spells.
Yet, the most demonic of fallen humanity’s self-righteousness can be easily exposed as ludicrous. Theologian Helmut Thielicke well remarked: “How comical the gods of the day seem just a few hours later, how absurd they look from behind!” He surely knew this from his living through the hell of the Third Reich. But those who are ignorant of history, who are fed lies that they can’t see through, are not at all prepared to handle the lies, and so they never will see the lies from behind – until it’s too late to escape.
As America becomes increasingly and self-righteously secular, ignoring Adams’ warnings on losing our Divine focus, increasingly averse to revealed truth on sin and grace, increasingly selective in our merely politicizing what’s basically “wrong” or “right”, we’ll have so badly lost our way that we’ll be nearly, if not, done for.
Among our greatest of losses, is the gift of gratitude, the great satisfaction of thankfulness, the utter blessings of thanksgiving.
And, what was it, that so very predictably replaced gratitude? It was, of course, grievance and griping, indeed, even industries of grievance and multiplied gripes over irrational fantasies that were coveted and remain, so predictably, intrinsically, out-of-reach of reality for they were, and are, mere fantasies conjured up by our own self-centered naivete. So, they spawn resentment, jealousy, anger, rage, revenge – all of which reinforce each other and then explode into self-righteous vengeance and deadly violence that’s displayed night after night, increasingly obvious, even day after day, in cities from coast to coast with record numbers of crimes against the innocent. And popular “promises” only fuel the crisis.
So long as there’s a refusal to turn to the Source of Salvation and real joy in the Love and Grace of our Creator and Savior, there’ll still be a clueless search for counterfeit substitutions. The unmet needs for God’s Love and Grace, offered so freely, will still be on exhibit in all of the angry self-righteousness and revenge.
Augustine of Hippo searched for fulfillment in all sorts of earthly pleasures, in decades of decadence and debauchery, through trapdoors of mythology and an assortment of varied philosophies. He finally gave up what he finally knew was his fruitless search and, in his very deepest depths of desperation, he cried out: “How long, O Lord, how long?”
In that uttered plea of his utter self-exhaustion, this brilliantly distressed seeker found the One Who’d always been seeking him, God, Himself. Then this grateful foundling wrote to God in rejoicing: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” So, he thanked God that, in God’s wise providence, his troubled heart had kept him unsatisfied until he willingly received the Deepest Rest that he so deeply needed from his Loving Creator, his Gracious Redeemer.
Thankfully, we’re made for that very most personal relationship with the One in Whose Image we’re made and Who saved us by His Incarnation in our place on the cross. Thank God that it’s no wonder our souls remain so very restless until we’re awakened by His love and to His love, and we rest in Him and His grace!