Live in Daily Thanksgiving

Thessalonians 5: 18 “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (Holy Bible, KJV)

Alma 34:38 “… and take upon you the name of Christ; that you humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.” (Book of Mormon)

 

From two scriptural sources we can read that the Lord is counting on us to give thanks daily, for every single thing, good or bad. Hmmm. How are you doing with that one? Been complaining lately? Life is often hard, there’s no escaping that fact. It’s usually inconvenient; but when all is said and done, it’s still amazingly wonderful.

I’ve lived a long time (and I hope I’ll be of sound mind and health to live a lot longer – I’m pretty fond of waking up every day). Two very important things I have learned along the way is that first, we’re not in charge. And second, we need to GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! The Lord sees things from the beginning to the end. He knows what will bring us growth, joy, benefit … even if we don’t see it at the time. He can do a lot more with our lives than we can if we were left in charge. We just need to be grateful for the lessons that come and the results they bring. If it’s still hard, then He isn’t done yet and we need to be patient and long-suffering.

It’s easy to be grateful for the good things; the beauty of the earth, wonderful people and opportunities in our lives, food on the table, a roof over our heads and gas in the car, just to name a few blessings. But it’s dang hard to be grateful for health challenges, terminal illnesses, difficult people, lack of anything, accidents, lost homes or jobs; in fact, loss of any kind. It’s difficult to be grateful when our feelings have been hurt or worse. In either instance, there are lessons to be learned. We learn from both abundance and lack, from success and failure and learning to take things as they come, with a grateful heart makes the tough stuff a little easier to deal with.

I need to work on this. I suspect most people do. I only bring it up because these are the verses and thoughts that came to my mind when I wondered what I should write about for Day 2 of blogging every day in November. I didn’t choose a “gratitude” blog for the month – although it’s a great idea – I just was hoping to post something of worth (for myself and hopefully for anyone reading this) every day. So, there you have it. A grateful heart … NO matter what. What do you think?