My pastor recently gave a sermon on being thankful. He talked about people with a critical and negative spirit who didn’t give thanks unless circumstances were going in their favor. I could have crawled under my chair. I thought for sure he’d been peeking in my window for the past several weeks. I knew that God had some important things He wanted to teach me about thankfulness, so I pulled up a chair next to His throne and listened intently.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence, he spoke something so profound, 1 Thes 5:18, “give thanks in everything”. Really? I actually did say that to God. I mean, really? Obviously I had not yet grasped His profound words of wisdom, because all I could think about was how Elijah got to watch winds whipping through mountains and earthquakes rumbling under his feet before God passed by in a gentle wind with ultimate words of wisdom.
After refocusing on the word God graciously spoke to me, I decided to give this thankful lifestyle a shot. How hard could it be to follow one verse every day? Armed with my phone and twitter as my medium, I forged ahead to broadcast my thankfulness in everything!
Sometimes I twitter things because I know that eventually I’ll find them funny and be thankful I survived. This is especially true when I’m getting aggravated with my surroundings or circumstances. For instance, if I’m in a hurry and get stuck behind a slow driver and hit every red light, I twitter how thankful I am for slow drivers and red lights. Although I may not be thankful at that very moment, I know that eventually I will laugh over my ludicrous behavior (i.e. talking to drivers who can’t hear me) and laughter is something I can be thankful for right? And honestly…I am thankful that I have a car, that there are traffic signals that protect me from crazy drivers, and that there are those people in the world who actually enjoy being Sunday drivers during the other 6 days of the week.
