Gratefulness is big business these days. Foundations have been formed to study and teach it. Brain potential single-day educational programs on gratefulness are making their way around the country. Oprah is focusing on it this month in her O, The Oprah Magazine. You can find presentations about it on TED talks. There’s even a website dedicated to nourishing and deepening your gratefulness.
The fact that we even have to teach people how to be grateful and how to exhibit gratefulness tells me something: gratefulness doesn’t come naturally to us. We have to think about it and work on it. Our hearts and minds really aren’t prone to it.
The problem?
So what’s the problem, aside from human beings generally being bent toward selfishness, self-preservation and self-promotion?
Are we too distracted by noise and sensory input from disquieting sources to appreciate the good things in our life?
Do we overlook the good things because we’ve become jaded to them and pay too much attention to the advertising that tells us what we have isn’t good enough and we need to keep striving for more, thus making anything we do have seem boring and unsatisfying?
Do we violate the 10thCommandment of “Thou shall not covet” too much and become depressed at what we consider to be a lack?
Do we buy too many things that we think will give us fulfillment and everlasting enjoyment and discover too quickly that they do neither, so we continue our search for more?
Do we really know what would prompt us to satisfaction and gratefulness?
And once we focus on gratefulness, how do we keep it a habit?
Taking a closer look at gratefulness—
In the next six Mondays leading up to Thanksgiving Day that we celebrate here in the United States, we’ll focus on gratefulness. What drives it, why we seem to suffer a lack of it, and why we need it. We’ll look at scientific research on it and see what God and some of His most remarkable people—like King David—have to say about it, or how they display it.
And, hopefully, at the end of the six weeks, you’ll come away with a heart set more on a permanent attitude of gratefulness. An attitude that will evolve and blossom into a lifestyle!
Until then, be thinking about the things or people in your life you are truly grateful for and why. Better yet, get a journal and turn it into a thankfulness notebook. I think you’ll be surprised at the affect writing them down has on your heart and spirit.
See you next week!
Blessings,
Andrea
May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).
Photo by Gabrielle Cole on unsplash.com