One week from today it will be the day after Thanksgiving ~the busiest shopping day of the year; a day when some people's true colors come out. I will never forget when I worked at Target and a little girl was trampled and had to go to the hospital because people were more concerned with getting inside the store first to grab whatever treasures they wanted, than to stop and help this precious child up. We are about to enter the Christmas season, a time when everyone becomes very aware of what they don't have and what they really "need". I must have already heard my own children say 100,000 times, "Mommy, I want that for Christmas!" as they watch cartoons or look in a retail catalog.
Do we ever really stop to give thanks for what we already have? Webster defines "thanks" as, "an expression of gratitude". Gratitude is defined as, "thankful appreciation for favors received". I wonder how many favors the Lord has given me that I have not appreciated or even noticed.
I think we often forget that nothing in life is perfect, even good things come with their own trials and hardships. When I look at my own life, I am thankful for my husband, but that means I must also be thankful for all those times he forgets to take out the trash or can't figure out how to fix something around the house. I am thankful for my children, but that also means I must be thankful for endless piles of laundry and dishes, for toys scattered on the floor and broken blinds in the windows. I am thankful for my church, but with that comes mornings when the music is too loud or times when I hear about someone who does not like something my husband has said or done. In the economy we currently live in, I am thankful for my husbands job, but that also means being grateful for lots of stress and the huge responsibility that rests on his shoulders everyday. Without all the bad, I would not have all the good. If I had no children, my house wouldn't have toys on the floor or dishes piled in the sink...if I had no children, so much joy in my life would be gone.
In Romans 1:21, Paul writes about a group of people who, "although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." A few verses later it says, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised."(Romans 1:25).
How often do we forget to really thank Him and glorify Him, but instead we become so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget? Our thinking becomes futile and soon we start to care more about ourselves than about Him. We trade His truths for our emotions. To show real gratitude means thanking Him for
every aspect in your life. So often Wesley and I can look at the very same situation, in two totally different ways. For example, take the faded, paint chipped off, 140,000 mile Geo Prism he drives everyday. There are times when he'll give a coworker a ride somewhere and I always feel so bad for him when others see the kind of car he drives. Everyone else in his office drives "lawyer type" cars, not a falling apart at the seams, Geo Prism. Whenever I talk about that car Wesley always reminds me that so many people told us that it wouldn't last past 100,000 miles, yet it is God who has blessed us with an extra 40,000 miles; and he'll keep driving it until it dies. "It's just a car, Marion!" He'll tell me. I can look at it and see something that is old, not desirable and flat out embarrassing. He can look at the very same thing and see God's provision for our family and a blessing wrapped underneath all that chipped off paint and peeling tinted windows.
How do you look at your life? It's all about how you perceive things. We have a cheesy exercise in our house that Wesley started long ago. Whenever one of us starts complaining about something, he'll start singing that old song, "Count Your Blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings see what God has done..." Before you know it, we are all smiling and our perspective changes. Suddenly you realize-life isn't so bad after all!
Like the old saying goes, is your cup half empty, or half full? I think if we really sit back and look around us, we'll see that our cup is neither, for in reality, it's overflowing.
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever.
Psalms 118:1
Pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:17-18
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