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GRATITUDE ATTITUDE FOR A THURSDAY
Rev Marie's thoughts are at the end of the post
OPENING?PRAYER
Heavenly Father, in the busyness of my day, I sometimes forget to stop and thank You for all that is good in my life. My blessings are many and my heart is filled with gratefulness and gratitude for the gift of living, for the ability to love and be loved, for the opportunity to see the everyday wonders of creation, for a mind that thinks and a body that feels. I thank you, too, for those things in my life that are less than I would hope them to be. Things that seem challenging, unfair, or difficult. When my heart feels stretched and empty, and pools of tears form in my weary eyes, still I rejoice that you are as near to me as my next breath, and in the midst of life?s turbulence, I thank you for your unending faithfulness. In the silence of my soul, I thank you most of all for your unconditional and eternal love. I pray all of this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.
SCRIPTURE
?So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!??2 Corinthians 5:17?
CLOSING?PRAYER
Heavenly Father, open the eyes of my heart so that I may truly see all of the abounding love, faithfulness, mercy and favour that you have so freely bestowed upon me. Lord, help me walk with ever increasing gratitude in my heart. In Jesus? name I pray. Amen.
Rev Marie's thoughts:
It is so easy to be thankful when things go my way. When I stand at the back of our yard at the end of a long and satisfying day, and I look out over the water reflecting a glorious sunset, words of thanksgiving just bubble up. ?My heart is often filled with a profound?sense of gratitude when those I love surround me and we are at peace. I have been?given?many graces and I am deeply aware of how much has been pure gift.
It is harder to be thankful in the dark moments and yet these have great value as well. ?It is ?also in those times when we struggle and even despair?that God is at work, crafting us into new creations. ?And while we cannot be thankful for the trouble, we can look for the?evidence of God's care for us in the midst of it. ?And we can hope that this very thing we wish so much to be rid of, will be used for good.
I look back over my life and realize how much of its present shape could never have been predicted?thirty years ago! ?I see so many places where the very circumstances that caused despair have been redeemed and as I reflect, I am moved to gratitude.
One of the most precious and unexpected?gifts I have received is in the awesome privilege I have each week as I celebrate the Eucharist. ?I say the prayer of thanksgiving and I am reminded each time that the stories of scripture are our stories. ?The stories I recount are the record of God's unrelenting love for a people who?like me are "prone to wander". ?I hear the words "This is my body . . ?this is my blood . . ." as if Someone else were saying them. ?I hear them spoken sometimes in deep sorrow at the last supper and sometimes in great triumph at the empty tomb and sometimes through?cracked and bleeding lips from the cross. Every time, I hear them as the words of a love so powerful, it is beyond understanding, ?Each time my heart is transformed yet a little more by that love.
Then comes the moment when I see person after person coming to the altar rail. ?Sometimes children skip up in joy and anticipation and I wish we had their sense of abandon! Sometimes little ones (especially those who are three or four!) gaze up in absolute wonder and I know something of what Jesus was?talking about when he asked us to come to him as a child.
And then I see a couple walking up together, hand in hand, and I see the evidence of a broken relationship,?restored and renewed. ?I see someone come?who is fighting a silent battle with depression, and weary of wearing a mask of cheerfulness to hide the pain from the world;??in that moment of receiving I see hope and courage being born once more. I see the tender care of one member of the body helping a blind friend to find their way to the front, another?helping someone with a walker and I know the body of?Christ is at work. ?I see someone whose life was ruled by addiction, now clean and whole and helping others find their way to the God who released them from that. I see person after person, each with their own story yet in some way all with the same story. ?It is the?story of those who have been given new life in Christ - and those who are only beginning to hope that they might discover what they are seeing in the lives around them.
What I see each week, in the faces and lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ, is evidence of the renewing work of the Holy?Spirit. ?I am?witness to the holy, transforming both characters and circumstances - making new creatures. And I while I am often most aware of it in those sacred moments, the evidence of that new life is all around each of us over and over again, if only we will have the eyes to see.
Take a few minutes to think of your own life - how has God worked in it in the golden, heartwarming moments, and in the dark days when you were in despair??Are you the same person you were ten years ago, ten months ago, ten days ago? ?How has God been transforming you?
Now think of those who are close to you, who are in a relationship with Christ. ?Are they the same people they were years ago? ?How have their priorities and?value changed? ?How do they approach life in the wonderful times and the everyday times and the dark times? How have they become new creatures in Christ?
In Christ, "everything has become new" ?Thanks be to God!