The secret of the good life when all is not good

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” Elie Wiesel

She knows the secret.  You will work best if you are kneeling.  The week after her husband was killed she knelt beside her son's crib and prayed and said thank you.   I know, I was there.  And I fell to my knees because of the holiness of the moment. I will be honest, I don't think I could have.  I don't think I would have gotten up the next morning, but she prayed.  And she has continued to do so for the past ten years.  Kneel.  She knows that gratitude is what forms us.  She knows that less is always more and that when you focus on goods you lay out a welcome mat for disaster.  "When it comes to our lives, our legacy, our longings, less is always more." Ann Voskamp

Where is God when bad things happen to people-the only kind there are people not just good or bad but all of us.  For none of us are pure good.  None of us.  Where is God?  He is in Emmanuel.  God with us. He is with us, not protecting, not rescuing, just being with.  And the only you will ever know this is through prayer and thanksgiving.

 And Paul said it best today in his letter to Ephesians, how to live the best life in spite of the tragedy.

 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. 

We each have been given the gift, but how often do we fail to open it.  How often would we rather be anger, resentful, bitter, anxious, fearful, worried than prayful.  How often do we forget to say thank you.  Thank you for just waking up, thanking you for just walking, for the breath we breathe, for a reasonable portion of health, for having a sound mind, for having a job at all, for having a house at all, for comfort because dear friends it could be so different.  So very different and it could be in a blink of an eye.  And but for the grace of God we have.  None of us are really in want.  None of us are really hungry.  None of us are really poor.  None of us are really in need except for one thing...more of God.  We are lonely.  But I suspect that is for God.  We are hungry and look for all sorts of ways to fill that up, but what we seek is God.  We are anxious, but what we are in need of to calm that anxious is God.  We are poor, but we are poor because we do not ask God. 

I don't know how she has done the last ten years except to say she knelt and she chose that day to open the gift in the midst of her tragedy and she chose that day to say thanks...and because of that one choice...grace follows her whereever she goes....




All is grace because of the gift we have all been given...

banana pudding milkshakes with crunchy vanilla wafers
thunderstorms
eating dinner with friends outside
teenage boys napping in the car
the sound of bats cracking
the new blooms of Bee Balm
the smell of rain coming
iced cold water
Tervis cups
sandals that show off pedicures
breathing
the smell of freshly painted doors
the cool dew on the grass
the morning sunshine after a night of rain
cats that chase birds
thick hand lotion

Kathleen