Day 3567 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 4:6 NIV

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

And yet, is not such a quite robust list of things over which we’ve instead come to worry and continue to despite the most dreadful of disdain that such things seem to inspire inside? Indeed, it’s as if we’ve chosen, actively most days, to continue this chase of the things which waste both time and thus life as if such a gift isn’t able to be lived without some weight of worry leaving us so very lost and weary that we’ve left nothing but contempt upon which to count. Yes, we count it all, every day and every drop as if it all does count, but to what we’re most days unsure and thus quite unready.

All because to be thankful is anymore an afterthought thought only after the fallout of whatever latest fear has left us alone for a moment after all but scaring the life out of us and us out of it.

That’s become a worry of mine as realized within this past week or so talking about the differing weights of want and worry. It’s a clarity that’s come to become a quite beautiful burden in a way in that it asks me to ask me what it is over which I worry. What in my life is weight that I not only need not but yet still insist as if it must stay? And in that way, what of all this weight might I shed were I to walk by the faith which asks us not to worry about all that’s worldly but to rather step forward unto what is a sea of eternity’s uncertainties?

For I believe that such a universally undoing of much of what I’ve done and become is perhaps the only best way in which we can walk by faith.

Otherwise we’ll simply do as we’ve always done as, no, not even now, no, there’s still nothing new under the sun. We all just rejoice in what’s but a repeat of the pasts, either those already lived by we who’ve lived them or rather our living what others have already themselves left behind for what they now believe better days and brighter ways. And all this retracing of what we’ve lived replacing, it’s placed within us a certain degree of separation from sanctification in that it divides our gratitude between the many things which deserve none from the few that really do.

But, then again, can we even think of anything for which our thanks should be shown? I mean, not to knock us, but our having become quite big on these holidays scattered throughout the year, it seems as though a day like today is one for which we save to celebrate. We store up our gratitude for this one day a year in which we’re all but forced to be thankful for what’s the rest of the year taken for granted. But, even then, and in all honesty, the modesty is mostly hidden behind too many pies and a few football games.

And that’s not to say that we can’t or rather shouldn’t be thankful for such delicacies as professional sports and entirely too much sugar, but it is to say that we shouldn’t be so quick to discount the gravity of God’s grace as shown endlessly within our everyday His ongoing willingness to hear us when we pray.

Should we not then strive to ensure that we pray something worth hearing?

Yet, in truth, most times we do just the opposite as we pray either in repetition or in a scattered cognition of a mistake we’ve made or, and mostly, for a thing we crave. And this misunderstanding of both prayer’s purpose and thanksgiving being a part of it, is shown in many ways within our very lives anymore. We hide our smiles behind sadness and shame. We tint our laughter with a hint of worry. We leave our joy mostly jaded as we journey joylessly into the jobs we hate and through jokes that are tired and jerks that cut us off in traffic.

Even today we may rush through meals and hurry to bed so that we can wake up early tomorrow in order to get in line to grab some deals on things we probably don’t need but simply have to have in order to have something new that replaces the old for which our love has indeed grown cold.

Just how cold are we though?

I’ll be the first to admit that to be thankful has become both a daily focus but also a continued fight. For let’s face it, this life doesn’t always look, feel, seem, sound anything close to right. Most days find us quite bound by the burdens of being in a place that couldn’t care less. It’s a tragedy of sorts in that we’re all just sort of out of place and yet trying so hard to feel as if we fit that we fight through fits of fear and fakery trying to prove what isn’t our place.

And it’s within this constant effort that I fear we fail to find His grace as worth the gratitude that is scarcely seen within our blend of attitudes.

Because I don’t personally understand how thanksgiving, as something asked of us here, can be so diluted with doubt, indifference, denial, disdain. I can’t quite seem to figure how fear is found so often, so easily, so readily ready to replace our faith and forgiveness and fealty to the Father who sent the Son to help us see that there’s more to this than we allow it to seem. And this because we’ve all but sewn ourselves inside the seams of a world coming apart at the same.

And having become so tied to that which is tried and tired, we too spend most every day caught somewhere between the same ourselves. Yes, we’re all just tired of the trying and torn, tearing ourselves daily apart from what we’ve been given in order to better serve what still we crave. And it’s within this, or rather from this from which He came to save. And yet, this is that daily fight that faith has become.

Is that how it should seem? A constant struggle to see anything for which to be thankful, in which to find joy, alongside which to finally find that we feel alive? Why do we so often spend so many of these gifts upon the getting as opposed to the giving of thanks for all we’ve been given?

And might a shift in this perspective perhaps help solve the problem?

What problem? The struggle to be grateful.

See, this is something I think all of us deal with in different ways and to different weights. It’s a reality of irrationality inside of which we’ve each been caught as if red-handed. Yes, we’re anymore but thieves trying to steal some substance from life that might allow us to feel alive again because we haven’t for some time now. No, we know now this life in which we notice more the pain, the rain, the strain through which smiles seem to come as if forced in order to fake that same feeling that everyone else is failing to find.

Yes, we’re seemingly all but unpaid actors performing in a most pitiable masquerade in which we just make ourselves seem happy to those who do the same for us in return. All so that none of us have to sit with the thoughts about why we’re not. Because, and we can be honest as in all things we should, we’re generally not, are we? Rather it feels as if fear or failure is far easier to find, isn’t it? For we daily do or say or see things that seem always only to steal away any reason for our joy, our thankfulness, our acceptance. No, we’ve got a whole list, and one growing at that, of things we highly dislike.

And when surrounded by others working their own lists over, well, seems all we have is a culture of discontent. And that’s not all that great a backdrop for the betterment of gratitude, is it?

Or is it?

See, we've all known a life shut off from the outside due to all the worry through which we just couldn't seem to walk. But maybe that's good, for if life has brought us finally to our knees, then we're too perhaps finally in the perfect position to pray for what's always been a need as opposed to all these wants long having disguised themselves as such. And our being here walking alongside so many doing this the same, perhaps this is the scene in which we can come to see the gravity of being grateful.

For, and as with many of these thoughts and theories, perhaps it’s all mine and thus might make no sense to anyone else, but for me, I find it an amazing opportunity to glean from a world gone cold and going further still a perfect portrait of both what I want not to be and too every reason why.

And it seems the only reason I’ve ever needed was found upon the frowns of a world flipped upside down seeking inside itself alone the life which was never meant to become so focused on the here and now as it has anyhow. No friends, God didn’t design this time to be spent so scattered between splatters of something assumed special and a past which proves how we’re often wrong. Rather, He created all of this out of His love for us, us being the pinnacle of such a painting.

What then are we missing that has left us unable to see this, appreciate this, be in fact so very thankful for this that thanksgiving is but amongst the silliest of holidays as gratitude is an attitude which shines forth in our every day? What might that be like, that kind of life in which we were just so thankful for everything that nothing was allowed to seem as bad as so many others seem to assume? Yes, what if we could do what so few seem willing to and see the same joy inside the pain as we do so easily within the peace?

Might then our peace not come in pieces and without instructions, a gift asking us to somehow figure out how to put it all together without any insight or suggestion? Other than our own that is. Yes, what if we ditched this idea that our delight was a matter measured in our ability to design a life in which we didn’t have to fear, never knew of worry, wanted nothing more than just whatever we already had to be thankful for? What might that life be like in which gratitude was all we sought to know rather than something we rarely knew?

Granted, it’s an uphill battle to be sure, especially considering the impossibility currently considered because of the latter half of all that, you know, because it isn’t something we’ve known much of thus far. But, what if we started? Indeed what if we began today, as it seems not only as good a day as any other but rather in fact one quite set apart to focus on this kind of thing, this joy and thanksgiving? Might not make up for the days, months, decades in which our being thankful was akin to Bigfoot sightings.

But maybe that’s the kind of challenge we need, not the finding of Bigfoot (though I’m down for some squatchin’), but rather the seeking of such things as joy, contentment, happiness, appreciation, acknowledgement of every gift we’re so continually given. Yes, what if we set our sights to the seeing and seeking of those things we’ve often overlooked, taken for granted? Might we know more of this joy that’s always seemed evasive? Might in that we ourselves come upon the Way that knows how to evade the weight of a life lost between worry and want?

This has been the underlying message as strewn throughout a weeks-worth of hoping that these posts would find those who need them, those being all of us and the posts being always written in that hope of both His honor and too to the help of another. It’s that we’re missing too much of all we’ve been given over which we should be grateful. Because the truth holds that we deserve not any of His goodness, His kindness, His care, compassion, consideration even.

And yet we’re given the lot every day of our life.

Perhaps it’s time that we come to see that each day is indeed itself a gift, and one that our pasts prove we shouldn’t have. For our pasts, all those days spent in mostly doubt and dread doing things our regret now says we shouldn’t have done, they’ve designed every reason for Him to stop giving us more chances, let alone so many blessings within them. That is something that we should be thankful for, no matter how they come nor what comes with them.

For the fact is that there is a reason for everything in life as all of this is bound to fit within His will as nothing is done without His knowing or knowledge. And if we truly believed this, as I believe our faith simply must, then we’d not only never run thin on things for which to be thankful, but rather we’d feel that we’d run out already of ways in which to say it or show it. For in truth, our gratitude should be so endless that we fear only boring Him with our prayers of appreciation.

Isn’t that a rather novel idea, prayers of appreciation?

I’ve personally over the years prayed more it seems out of desperation, frustration, aggravation and this attempt at the justification of my just doing whatever I wanted and expecting Him to forgive the many mistakes made along the way. Yes, such is what I know most of us know most in regard to prayer. It seems that we pray only in moments of want or worry, asking for either help getting out of something we hate or rather the getting of something we’d like. But I don’t imagine that such is what prayer was ever meant to be as it seems instead a gift given in the time spent refocused on our Father as opposed to our failure.

And so what if we did that differently? What if we started this journey back to gratitude within our prayers? Seems a safe place to start. And who knows but that if we do start with turning our focus in prayer to being thankful for all that He is, all that He does, that He is there, perhaps this would then spill into other areas and aspects of our attention and intention. And perhaps this would help to alleviate some of this tension in which we’re so tired and torn.

Alas, it seems that such can only be done when anxiety is no longer welcome. That’s what He tells us here. To be anxious about nothing but to rather replace that fear and trepidation with humility, courage, the consideration of all we have to be thankful for having. For I contend that such is the point or prayer as it’s a rather radical refocusing upon the will of God, and this usually away from our own.

That’s my hope for everyone today. That we take this time in which we’re surrounded by the remind of everything for which to be grateful and we harness it into a humility that helps us see even more of what we should be thankful for. Because one of the seemingly lost facts of life is that we’ve all far more to rejoice over than we do to remorse. It’s all a matter of focus, and one in which we’ll find this other fact of life of which I too most firmly believe.

And that is that if you change your mind, you will in fact find a change of life.

And well, being more thankful seems a really good place to start.

Because, as eternity holds, it’s one that has no end. And that’s pretty special as we can’t same the same of anything else done or won, wanted or worried about within this world. So set your sights on Heaven, for from there come all these gifts we have to be thankful for, and to there we’ve this most joyous opportunity to hope in our one day being. And that opportunity is definitely something worth our gratitude.

And not only today, but every day, and too, no matter the circumstance. For thanksgiving cannot be so trivial as to be tied to what we go through but should always rather be fought to as we simply shouldn’t have that ability. But that we do is reason enough to make the most of it.

Every day we have and in every way we can.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold