Gratefulness as the One Response

I turn old today. It is my birthday and as a grown man working a ministry and job and career and creative endeavors and entrepreneurship and writing and raising a family for nearly thirty years, I don’t really need anything or anyone to do anything special for me. My birthday wish was for my close family members to go walk in the woods for me and hang out with some farm animals to get outside air. We did that. My mind has the capability and proclivity I might add, to find those things that irritate and annoy me, that I might change or be upset about.

None of the these little life irritants has any consequence on my soul or my purpose or my direction, so I banish them from my head.

Instead, I turn to gratefulness. Ah, the one preach that I’ve kept by my side through thick and thin and always at the ready to pull out and remind myself and others that we don’t deserve good things but we still get them daily in Christian community and God’s goodness. You don't even have to look at how bad some people have it - comparison is a master - but if you must, it is right there screaming “you are blessed” and if you are not yet mature in gratefulness, grab onto the plight of others to prove it to yourself. But there is a greater depth to gratefulness. All the musicians, artists, educators, friends, students, bands, marketers, messages, counselors, prayers, and so many other roles people have been in my life for decades are plenty of testimony to the need for gratefulness. Donors and givers and new songs and breakout prophetic moments of gathered worship and handwritten notes of encouragement (everyone keep an Encouragement file!), all of these things, and the people behind them especially, are the embodiment of my extreme gratefulness to God for a life surrendered and growing in Christ.

Gratefulness is my one response.