“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.”
1 Timothy 4:4-5
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denials into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beattie
Saying the words, “it’s all good!” without real understanding is not only absurd, it’s offensive. There’s a lot that’s not good at the human level of existence. Our personal challenges and the daily news make that obvious. “It’s all good!” is actually a spiritual tool—a way to trigger our capacity for gratitude. Gratitude is an action that turns our attention to the creative power at the core of our lives. It calls us, not to ignore what is happening in our humanity, but to look deeper. Gratitude opens the flow of Christ power into our minds and hearts. It shows us a new vision, one where healing, abundance, and peace are reality.
Gratitude is spiritual principle in action. It is a choice, as the I Timothy scripture above notes, to realize God’s goodness in creation and to call that good forth with thanksgiving and prayer. We see the good, even if we see it only in seedling form. We make decisions based on that awareness of good. With an attitude of gratitude, when we notice what is not working in life it’s not a cause for despair. Rather it is an incentive to seek more deeply and discover further evidence of God’s Life and Presence. Gratitude gets us out of fear and into love, out of the “if only’s” and into the “I can’s.” Gratitude energizes us—getting us off the sidelines and into life.
Let us ask ourselves as we celebrate gratitude today, “What can I contribute to my circumstances? Whatever they are, how can I pack good into the stream of life? What can I give?” As we respond to these questions, we can say with great power and understanding, “It’s all good!” How? Because we choose to make it so.
In the Love and Light of the Christ,
Rev. Anna
