About a week and a half ago, I had dinner with my
god-parents. These are people who I
spent a lot of time at their house across the street while growing up. I stayed over there until I heard my mom ring
the bell that hung in the garage. To
this day, they still tease me about me being at their house saying, “I don’t
hear that bell ringing.” Anyway, I
invited myself to dinner, literally. I
texted her and said, “What time is dinner?”
Of course, I didn’t think to add that I was in town (we live 2 ½ hours apart). Once we got past that hurdle, we made plans
for dinner. While at their house, I saw
that she had a beautiful leather-bound edition of Jesus Calling, a
devotional book that is very popular right now.
I decided then to get one for myself.
Already, in my three days of reading it, I’ve been blessed
so much! The first day was on a day a
friend was having surgery. The topic was
putting your trust in God. I texted her
to see if she had read it that day too and she had. That day’s devotion was comforting not only
because of what it spoke to be but because it also provided a supportive
connection to a good friend.
Today was about sacrificially giving thanks. At first, I thought, how is it sacrificial to
give thanks? The verse it referenced is
Ps. 50:14,
“Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and pay your vows to the Most
High.”
If you read a bit further down through the Psalm to verse
23, you will see after a pretty good scolding, it ends again with the idea of
sacrificial thanks,
“Whoever sacrifices a thank offering honors Me, and whoever orders his
conduct, I will show him the salvation of God.”
In Biblical times the sacrifice was animal, grain, or
whatever. We don’t do those now so how
do we sacrifice in giving thanks? It’s
about giving thanks even when you don’t want to, even when you don’t readily see
those things to be thankful for. Sacrificial
giving means that it has to hurt some.
You have to give up something of value for it to be sacrificial. It seems oxymoronic (is that a word??) to say
“Be thankful until it hurts” but the point is that even when we are hurting we
need to be thankful. And, sometimes it
is painfully hard to step outside of our circumstances and be grateful.
I know there have been times when I’ve avoided my Bible
study because I was mad. And I wanted to
stay mad. I felt I had every right to
be. The sacrifice in this instance was
to put my own feelings aside, to deny self, to step outside of myself and be
more Christ like.
In my anger, I missed being thankful that I live in a
country that freely allows me to Christian.
I missed being thankful for the ability to study in and of itself. And, probably most importantly, I missed the
blessing that studying always brings me.
For me, maintaining my humor and sense of gratitude are
vital to keeping my head above water.
My current favorite song is “Next to Me” by
Emeli Sande. I absolutely love it
because it describes Tim to a tee and it reminds me how grateful I am for God
bringing him to me, even before I knew God.
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