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Take note, give thanks
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Second Week of Advent
Psalm 145:10, 13
Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord … your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and your dominion endures through all generations.
In One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp says that “our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what he gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”
God’s rescue medicine is giving thanks. Thank you, Lord, for this day. Today. This moment. This breath. Heartbeat.
Doesn’t God show us how? We can ignore his fingerprint on our life, and the way he gives thanks for us. But it is much better if we don’t. Ann writes again:
I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I’ve seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.
God gives thanks for me. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made … My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139).
Can I screw this up? Seems like I do, over and over. It’s hard to see, from my point of view, how God’s creativity continues in me and for me without a moment’s hesitation on his part. My doubt turns to hunger and my waiting turns to striving and I lose track of the first fact that, again in Ann’s words, “Worry is the façade of taking action when prayer really is.”
As I stare into the endless reaches of blue sky, Lord, thank you for my eyes. Fill me up through my eyes and ears, lift my thoughts, rescue my imagination and raise it up holy and pure. I want to give you glory and praise you every day of my life. Amen.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1406
