Gratitude For All Gifts From God
This is a partial description of my gratitude list:
- Raking brightly colored red maple leaves into gigantic piles in the abnormally warm autumn temperatures.
- Family members and sisters recovering from COVID-19.
- Calming relief with the soon-to-be White House residents.
- Remaining employed during this tumultuous pandemic.
- Growing awareness of the countless tragic deaths due to COVID-19 and prayers for their families.
- Praying for our vulnerable sisters and brothers due to violence and climate change.
- Experiencing the pre-dawn quiet and fresh air.
Believing that all is gift from a good and gracious God, one is beckoned to offer thanks and praise even in the midst of the messiness of each day. A gift that we can share with others is the attitude of gratitude and hopefulness in these uncharted times.
Writer Robert Braathe offers this insight: “Gratitude and attitude are not challenges; they are choices.”
With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, many families are not gathering in person for safety reasons. This new reality invites us to express gratitude for the people in our lives in different ways.
Every day can be a “Thanksgiving Day,” and the German-Dutch diarist Anne Frank wrote it simply and profoundly: “I lie in bed at night, after ending my prayers with the words ‘Ich danke dir für all das Gute und Liebe und Schöne.’ (Thank you, God, for all that is good and dear and beautiful.)”
Thank you for reminding us for what we must be grateful. I am deeply grateful to our employees for their fantastic care for us —- way beyond their job descriptions. God bless them through all the seasons.
What a simple and right on target expression of thankfulness in these strange times. Thank you, Nanc,y for expressing it so well.
Beautiful expressions of gratitude, not just for Thanksgiving time but for all time. I am expecially grateful that you included the quote by Anne Frank.
Watching the sun rise over the Mississippi early this morning, not only warmed my body, but brightened my heart; How wonderful and glorious are you, O Creator God, I am filled to the brim with gratitude. Transform the pain of our world and infuse your strength into those in need. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing your gratitude list, Nancy. It elicits my own prayer of thanks.
Nancy, thank you for your thoughtful and beautiful Thanksgiving message. You have named so many so- called “ordinary things” for which we can be grateful., especially during these challenging times. In these days of isolation, a simple thing like a telephone call can lift the spirit’s of both the caller and the person called.
Thanks, Nancy, as always for your inspiring words. Gratitude keeps us all hopeful these days.
I read somewhere (which I cannot now remember) another thought about gratitude — that God indeed rejoices in and is grateful for us as humans and all our kin (all creatures and plant and animal life)
It is almost as if God says” “Thank you for being.”
Thank you, Nancy, for words that touch our deepest and widest areas of gratitude this Thanksgiving time.
Gratitude, too, for joining Franciscan and BVM concerns for social justice issues into one common pursuit.