Gratitude

I am currently reading a book called "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  It's about being grateful whatever the circumstances may be.  I cannot be saved, if I am not grateful.  Grateful for the good things, and the bad things.  Grateful for my sorrows.  I have to learn to say yes to God.  Yes in everything, just like Jesus did in the garden.  Just like Jesus did when He gave thanks for the bread and fed a thousand.  Cup my hands and accept His gifts.  Whatever they may be.  Once we are grateful, and we enter His courts with gratitude, we are able to see beauty everywhere, and anywhere.. and God is beauty.. and I see Him everywhere.

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.  Satan wanted more.  More power, more glory.  Ultimately in his essence, Satan was an ingrate.  And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden.  Satan's sin become the sin of all humanity:  the sin of ingratitude.  Adam and Eve are simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave.  Isn't that the catalyst of all my sins?  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.  Standing before that tree, laden with fruit withheld, we listen to Evil's murmur, "In the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened..." (Gen. 3:5).  But in the beginning, our eyes we already opened.  Our sight was perfect.  Our vision let us see a world spilling with goodness.  Our eyes fell on nothing but the Glory of God.  We saw God as He truly is: good.  But we were lured by deception that there was more to a full life, there was more to see.  And, true, there was more to see: the ugliness we hadn't beheld, the sinfulness we hand't witnessed, the loss we hadn't known.  We eat.  And, in instant, we are blind.  No longer do we see God as one we can trust.  No longer do we perceive Him as wholly good.  No longer do we observe all of the remaining paradise.  We are hungry.  We eat.  We are filled... and emptied. ~ Ann Voskamp

All is grace,