Tag: gratitude

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Faith Life

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

“I pray for you, that all your misgivings will be melted to thanksgivings. ~Jim Elliot

_black eyed susans

Today, we offer fresh-brewed gratitude.

We won’t serve God the sentimental leftovers of olden days, when life saluted us with cheerful favor, when headlines were benign, when custom-order blessings appeared daily at our doors.

Gratitude is not reserved for moments when the sun beams on our dreams.

Especially when bad news blurs and ill-winds batter, we turn from lament for this one day. We deliberately savor the warmth of a sturdy love, of mercies delivered new every morning, even when we forget to notice.

God deserves and delights in our gratitude, for our sake, not for his.

For he knows we weary our souls with relentless complaint. He hears our self-pitiful moaning, for our state, so alone and unloved. He watches as dank dungeons of bitterness become our second home. Deaf to his whispers of hope and redemption, we sink beneath our worry, so he throws us a life-saving line, In everything give thanks, for this is my will for you.*

So, today, untether your expectations, and let God be the only definition of good.

In the end, we will realize even desperate moments were soaked with grace. The people who annoyed and distressed us will turn out to have been our best tutors. The hostile divisions, the what-ifs we dreaded, the ideas that outraged us, will scatter in the face of incomparable Love.

In one great “Aha!” we will be made new.

Someday. But today, if we are grateful, we rehearse who we will someday be.

On this day, pour some fresh-brewed gratitude, and offer it to God.

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

Thanks for prayers that you have answered,

Thanks for what you have denied.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all you have supplied.

Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace that none can measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

 (Adapted from the hymn,  Thanks To God For My Redeemer, by August L. Storm)

*1 Thessalonians 5:18

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

 

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Faith Life

Je Vais En France Aujourd’hui

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~Marcel Proust

Allons-y! 

Here I go! Today I fly to the south of France for a plein air painting workshop. I’ll spend  two weeks peering at poppy fields and vineyards, castles and Roman ruins. And, after I’ve gazed, squinted, breathed, looked around me nervously, I will dip a brush in oily color and….

My teacher is great, but I’m a rookie among hall of famers. A friend posted this quote for me yesterday, “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” (Edgar Degas). I think Degas was right. I’m in the Junior T-ball stage, I can’t fail, and there’s a juice box and fist bump waiting at the end of every effort.

So far I have:

Practiced Sketching

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And Mixing Colors

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Created My Values

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And Packed My Paint Supplies

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Blogging In France?

I hope I will. But more than that, I hope to savor every moment of this gift. Traveling teaches us to pay attention, to look at the world through less smeary lenses. I leave, already repentant for daily graces I seldom notice, the kindness of God reflected in ordinary moments, and people I walk past every day. 

I go to France to learn to paint. I go to France to learn to say “Merci beaucoup” more often when I return.

What has travel taught you?

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Sabbath Quiet: Humble Gratitude

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton

gratitude

Gratitude And The Giver

Thank you, God, for everything, the big things and the small,

For every good gift comes from God, the giver of them all.

And so at this time we offer up a prayer to thank you, God for giving us a lot more than our share.

First, thank you for the little things that often come our way, the things we take for granted and don’t mention when we pray,

The unexpected courtesy, the thoughtful, kindly deed, a hand reached out to help us in the time of sudden need.

Then thank you for the miracles we are much too blind to see, and give us new awareness of our many gifts from Thee.

And help us to remember that the key to life and living is to make each prayer a prayer of thanks and each day a day of thanksgiving.

~ Helen Steiner Rice

Accept With Gratitude

Accept with gratitude everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need for humbling and to help you in it.

Reckon humility to be the mother-virtue, your very first duty before God, the one perpetual safeguard of the soul, and set your heart upon it as the source of all blessing.

The promise is divine and sure: He that humbles himself shall be exalted. See that you do the one thing that God asks, and He will see that He does the one thing He has promised. He will give more grace; He will exalt you in due time.

~Andrew Murray, Humility

Do you notice the relationship between gratitude and humility as you look at your life?

Photograph by MC Hunt
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Sabbath Quiet: A Morning Blessing

St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves.~ G.K. Chesterton

The blessing of flowers

A Franciscan Morning Blessing

Jesus, I offer you this new day because I believe in you, love you, hope all things in you and thank you for your blessings.

I am sorry for having offended you and forgive everyone who has offended me.

Lord, look on me and leave in me peace and courage and your humble wisdom that I may serve others with joy, and be pleasing to you all day.

Amen

Wisdom of St. Francis

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.

Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation.

Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice.

Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

A Grammar of Gratitude

St. Francis was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving.

If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude.

He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss…the great and good debt that cannot be paid.

G.K. Chesterton, from St. Francis of Assisi

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