It’s officially summer, and while the hot and humid nature of this season typically doesn’t agree with me, there are lots of elements about it that make it wonderful. And while this summer hasn’t included baseball (yet), I did get to enjoy one of the delicacies to beat the heat: homemade ice cream.

It’s time consuming. And oftentimes more expensive than it needs to be. And it doesn’t always freeze well. And it melts really fast. But there’s something about the experience that makes an evening that much more magical. On Father’s Day, my wife’s dad purchased an ice cream machine and wanted to make his first batch of the year. It was a new recipe, but he assumed it worked like all the others.

It did not work like all the others.

This recipe required 5 hours of prep work. When we started the process, it was 7pm. That would have allowed us to finally eat it at midnight. Whoops. We did the most stereotypical dad thing on Father’s Day and didn’t read the directions. And my wife did the most stereotypical mom thing and made fun of us for it. I deserved that.

You know what else I deserve? I deserve to be made fun of and shamed by God for screwing up in life, too. I don’t read His instructions as much as I should, too. And even when I do, I tend to follow my own gut instead.

As we stumble and bumble through life, I continue to marvel at the grace of God. And I do a lot of stumbling and bumbling. There are consequences for that stumbling and bumbling, to be sure. But grace continues to overcome it. Mistakes are met with second chances. And third chances. And fourth, and fifth, and sixth.

And I don’t have to wait until midnight to enjoy that grace. It comes right away. And while that ice cream was still SO GOOD, grace is that much sweeter.