Ok, let’s get the obvious out of the way – Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a good holiday season with all it’s chaos, food, family stuff and minutia. I think it was a great time this year for me personally. There was time to really enjoy the season and contemplate how important friends and family really are. I found myself viewing gratefully the gift of Jesus, the incredible clarity of the Bible and the joy of worshipping with friends and family. It makes it hard not to give it away.
We all know that life will soon return to a more normal pace – whatever that is. The quality and variety of food will diminish. We will see our friends and our family probably less than the previous two weeks. And our grateful, joyous experiences will fade into the normalcy of tolerance and occasional complaining about and to one another. So it goes after the holidays.
I am inspired, however, by and article in the Parade magazine in this week’s Sunday paper. It is called “Up Your Gratitude.” A lawyer explains how during a terrible time in his life he turned to expressing gratitude to the people around him as a way to cope with life’s speed bumps. It’s worth the read if your paper hasn’t already become kindling for a fire or liner for the birdcage. His book is probably good to read as well.
Anyway, my challenge for the New Year is to be more grateful and more expressive of my gratefulness to those around me. I’ll start at home, then shift outward to my work associates, also moving towards my friends and those service people who make my life so great – yes, that means you, Starbucks barista’s at Mason Road and La Centerra, Randall’s and Kroger.
I’ll start right here to give away some gratefulness: Thank you for being a part of my life. Thank you for tolerating my strange sense of humor, moody disposition and overly long diatribes. Thank you for loving my family and helping us continue to pursue those things that enrich our lives. Thank you to my church family, recent and past, for making my decision to start a new kind of church so exciting and possible. Thank you to all my mentors and coaches who have poured into my life when it was empty or close to it. Thank you to my wife and kids, who stick with it through the ups and downs. Who never give up on the possibilities. Who love unconditionally each day.
Finally, thank you, God, for life itself, for eternal possibilities, for earthly pleasures and strength. Thank you for seeing us for who we could be rather than who we really are.
So, Happy New Year. May you find gratitude in each day and may you find it hard NOT to give it away.
Peace Tim
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