Being grateful. I am being grateful to you all today. Let’s give thanks to God today and everyday. Check out this post about the powerful practice of gratitude.
Being grateful was a spiritual discipline one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, wrote about. Besides turkey, chew and digest these words today:
“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work.
Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say “thank you” to all that has brought us to the present moment.
As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.
Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.
Henri Nouwen
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the U.S. celebrating today. I know some of you are from other places and have different dates for Thanksgiving but each day can be a day of thanks if we just pay attention to all the gifts God gives us.
How are you being grateful today?
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours my friend! I hope your days were filled with gifts that sent you into a prayer of gratefulness.
I love Nouwen!
Ceil
I knew we both loved Nouwen. Hope you have had a great week full of turkey and thankfulness!
I hope you and yours had a marvelous Thanksgiving, Jean! I am grateful for you and your friendship.
Blessings!
we did have a nice Thanksgiving and even got decorated for Christmas too. Hope you did too and like you I am grateful for your friendship too.
Meaningful quotes as always, Jean. Thank you! Love that wisdom from Henri Nouwen, especially: “Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now.” THAT’S how we can be thankful in and through all things. Our loving Heavenly Father uses every experience, every relationship to bring us to where we are now–a bit wiser, a bit more mature, a bit closer to Him. (Please remind me of Nouwen’s words when trouble strikes and I lose sight of this truth!)
let’s help each other remember when we need to. Have a great week.