What a Gift!

What an amazing gift this last week is been. When the weather touches the 70s in early November, you have to be grateful. When we look back at how much snow we had already gotten it this point last year and then compare that to walking outside in shorts, it is truly a gift!

But sometimes it's hard to be grateful even with something as fickle as weather. Gratitude is not natural to entitled-inconvenience-driven suburbanites like ourselves. Yes that means you. Yes that means me. When we have the anticipation so much in life will break our way, we miss the good and gracious gifts that God gives - like the leaves in our front yard that brush against our legs in a November day in shorts.  Even with goodness all around, gratitude can go forgotten.  

There is a phrase that I keep repeating to myself when bitterness rises up: "You can thank your way out of any problem."  

Chances are this week you will have someone or something or some circumstance that disappoints you. And the pain it causes will leach in. Each and everyone of us will be given the choice to sulk or to find a way to be grateful in all circumstances. Which one of those do you think God has asked of you as a follower of Jesus?

Make a choice to be grateful.  Change your mind and heart and spirit. If you change yourself, everything around you will start to change.