Gratitude is Key!

I am reading more about gratitude and want to share these insights with you. Job 1: 10 says, “If we take happiness from God’s hand, must we not also take sorrow too?” Henri Nouwen says this about the subject in his book, Bread for the Journey:

“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives–the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow,  the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those that we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see it in the guiding hand of a  loving God.”

This necessary and timely reminder has prompted me to make another attempt at a discipline that I was introduced to in seminary. Dr. Burrell Dinkins suggested that we take time each day to literally count our blessings and enumerate at least three things from the previous day that we are thankful for. He said that he and his wife do this every day on their daily walk with each other and it has changed their relationship with each other and God. I have tried this with good success a couple of times in the past, but have allowed it to be crowded out by other things when life got busy or stressful. Time to make another attempt. I am redownloading the Gratitude Journal app on my iPhone. You can also try doing this with a note pad, blank journal or by buying a Gratitude Journal from Amazon.com or any major book store. Any one out there want to join me on this journey of gratefulness? Let me know and we can encourage each other along the way.