Day 4 Where have you discovered gratitude within?
We so often jump to what I need or want when we pray, that finding time to be grateful within, for the answers to prayer from previous occasions, takes some doing. We have to force ourselves sometimes to slow down and think about what we are truly thankful for.
“Tomorrow start spending five minutes each morning looking at God alone, giving all glory and worship to Him. List as many attributes as you can remember. List His creations. It gets much easier the more you do it. Soon you won’t have to set your timer. I promised your life will never be the same again.” (Teaching Kids Authentic Worship)
In this lesson on worship, I’ve begun setting my watch for a five minute period to start with gratitude.I also name as many things as I can be thankful for. Some days I look at each decade of my life to remember where God has blessed me in difficult circumstances. Some days I think and name the people who have touched my life, for which I am grateful. Sometimes I begin with favorite hymns that have blessed my life. This hymn from Carolyn Winfrey Gillette sums up an element of giving thanks in this difficult period of time too.
A hymn for Thanksgiving
God, Your Blessings Overflow
DIX 7.7.7.7.7.7 ("For the Beauty of the Earth")
God, your blessings overflow! What can we begin to say?
How can we begin to show, All our gratitude this day?
God, we join to worship you, Giving thanks for all you do.
Thank you for the life you give, For each friend and family,
For the land in which we live, For your love that sets us free.
Thank you, God, for daily bread, And for feasts of joy you spread.
Yet at tables where we share, Sometimes there is also pain.
There may be an empty chair: When will we feel whole again?
When our days of grief are long, Thank you that your love is strong.
So we join in thanks this day, So your gifts we freely share,
So we follow Christ the Way, Loving, serving everywhere.
Spirit, may our lives express, All our daily thankfulness.
Tune: Conrad Kocher, 1838, in chorale Treuer Heiland ("For the Beauty of the Earth") (MIDI)
Text: Copyright © 1998 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.
Copied from Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (Geneva Press, 2000).
I also have begun to collect books on gratitude and thanksgiving. If you struggle with wanting to be more grateful within, I would recommend these books. I am grateful that Kindle has made my book buying so much easier. My mother was a librarian and taught me to love books. I always needed support for an idea and I would forget where I got it, but thankfully the books were nearby. My Doctor of Ministry taught me to save my books, heavily underlined, so that I could defend my dissertation easily. Hoarding can be a result of that attitude. Now I struggle to get rid of books in retirement., a story for another day, back to recommendations.
Deborah Norville Thank You Power. Great beginning to see the power and blessings of gratitude. Margaret Visser The Gift of Thanks: The roots and rituals of Gratitude can point you in several directions. Diane Butler Bass Grateful can be another way to develop a grateful heart. Anne Lamott Help Thanks Wow is more about prayer, but it essentially reminds us of how much gratitude and thanks giving should be done related to our time with God. Dallas Willard, a great resource for developing your whole spiritual life has a book on the 23rd Psalm that helps us see gratitude as well. Life Without Lack.
As my mother reminded me of how important sending thank you cards were after receiving gifts, we need to apply that to God’s touch upon our lives. Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart.
Tomorrow I’m going to share a link to a thanksgiving service for you to use either Wednesday night or Thursday morning to help you spend time with gratitude. I hope that the music, the prayers and the sharing of gratitude included in it will develop your gratitude within muscles.
Thank you for joining me in this journey of gratitude and thanksgiving. I am truly grateful that you stopped by to read this as well. Share with a friend who may need some encouragement and hope, especially now. We have been talking about the empty seats at the table this year. Like the hymn above, we remember those who cannot join us at the table and pause to remember them. May the Holy Spirit comfort you when you do that as a sign of gratitude for their footprint on your life.
Blessings
Pastor Jeff
To be continued….
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