Happy Monday!
It’s Thanksgiving week! Although there’s much to be done in preparing for the feast, I hope you took time to downshift from the busyness and allowed yourselves some rest. I also hope you spent a few precious moments thinking about the many blessings for which you are grateful.
Gratitude transforms our circumstances, and this is one day in the year when we openly acknowledge how thankful we are for the gifts we enjoyed throughout the year. You may reflect on the past and tender memories preserved. Maybe your thoughts drifted toward the present and the beauty surrounding you in friends and family. I’ll wager some of you are contemplating the many ways you’re spiritually and emotionally blessed.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 reminds us:
“Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.” (MSG)
Gratitude is a spiritual discipline. The more we practice being thankful in all circumstances, the more gratitude becomes our natural expression. When we’re grateful, we find more things that delight us and increase our joy. And that joy is infectious. Think of a time when you witnessed pure joy. Did you find yourself smiling along with the delighted one? Were you able to share in the moment? And didn’t it leave you feeling lifted?
That’s what gratitude can do, and the more we look for opportunities to be grateful, the more opportunities manifest.
Colossians 3: 15-17 underscores the power of thankfulness:
“Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.” (MSG)
I’ll leave you today with this extraordinary prayer delivered by President John F. Kennedy in 1963:
A Prayer of Gratitude
Let us proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings – be humbly thankful for inherited ideals – and resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
On that day, let us gather in sanctuaries dedicated to worship and in homes blessed by family affection to express our gratitude for the glorious gifts of God, and let us earnestly and humbly pray that He will continue to guide and sustain us in the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all men and nations of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.
Have a lovely Thanksgiving celebration filled with gratitude for the abundant provision in your life, the blessing of relationships that remind you of the importance of human contact, and the freedom to worship and explore your spiritual connection with God.
Be Well & Be Blessed!
Lucinda
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