Gratitude Part three

 

Any insights yesterday as you considered the story you tell yourself?  Did you take time to listen to the narrative in your brain?  Maybe right now you are saying, “Wait that was actual homework?  I didn’t realize Wes wanted me to turn that in!”  These are invitations for you, not requirements or assignments.

 

When I start to preach or teach about “Gratitude,” I realize that there are many ways to receive that word.  How you read Monday’s reflection is a reflection on your unique ways of being created in God’s image.  How you read Monday’s meditation was filtered and framed through your experiences and encounters.  If you grew up around people who are cheerful and found the sunny-side of life, maybe a reminder about gratitude is helpful.  If you grew up around people who were modern-day Eeyore’s and who taught you that someone is always out to get you, gratitude sounds another promise that could be broken.   Maybe the story you tell yourself is different and distinctive than those two examples I just shared. 

 

I know one story I tell myself is stuck in the muckiness of cynicism and criticism.  I was raised in an era of “critical thinking” which was often trying to point out where something was lacking or some argument fell short.  I was raised to believe that I could be “objective” not realizing how my experiences and encounters and geography and family had already formed and fashioned me to think/feel/speak/live in a certain way.  I had been given a story.  More and more I realize and recognize, my point of view is a view from a point.  I have so many filters and frames built from forty-something years on this earth. 

 

Given the narrative and operating system in my brain, I need to work a bit harder with gratitude.  Thanksgiving was not a prayer practice and posture I grew up with or was taught to me.  Yet, I do believe that gratitude is a holy way of living.  Thanksgiving can be an openness even when there is brokenness.  Such a way of life can begin to acknowledge that every moment has both beauty and bruises.  Every single second is imperfect and full of God’s love.  Such contradictions are not easily resolved and can cause restlessness within us. 

 

I pray this week you are dancing with gratitude in new ways.  That you are finding life-giving moments to see the light in the night or the hope even through the tumult.  For moments that your heart is strangely warmed and our soul is stirred.  I am practicing this prayer posture right alongside you this week and always willing to talk more.

 

Prayer: God continue to open me to the ways You are dancing in my life.  Continue to invite me to see the traces of Your grace and the glimpses of unconditional love that meets me where I am.  Take my life this day and each day, help me be open to You authoring/conducting/composing this day.  Amen.