A Day of Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving eve & my thoughts have turned to my bounty. I have been given much! I've thought about gratitude more often this year than most. It was my word of choice this year; I tried to let it define my life for 2008. I think it only appropriate, due to the holiday tomorrow, to wrap up my experience and thoughts now.

The year started out and I began writing in a gratitude journal at night. I'd record 5 things I was grateful for each day. I also began highlighting the simple joys I found in life in my "life is beautiful" posts here on this blog. This was beneficial for several reasons. First, it helped me be more alert to the things I could write about. Second, by recording them I have been able to look back and recall all the goodness in my life. Third, and most important, it has brought the giver of all these blessings, the fount if you will, to be more present in my life.

If you've been around long enough you know that I've trailed off on those posts. I also haven't entered anything in my journal for a long while. I told myself that I could still be grateful even if I didn't make the effort to write it down. Truth is, it hasn't happened that way. By not taking that few minutes each night, my mind has only had a fleeting whim of thankfulness. The absence of blog posts on what is beautiful in my life has blurred my ability to see it. What has taken its place is clouds--my constant to-do list, worries, wishes, and various complaints.

And so my lesson is this: we must take the time each day to record our gratitude or our temporal clouds will overcast the love of our Lord. Even as we face mountains, or trials, that refine or reduce us (our choice), our level of gratitude helps us feel our Savior's love & see through the clouds. We need to take the time each day to feel it. That love is what enlarges us and enables us to get on top of the mountain instead of being crushed by it. To quote what has become my favorite hymn,

Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
--Come thou Fount of Every Blessing

The word Ebenezer comes from two words in Hebrew & means 'stone of help.' In the Bible we read that to commemorate the victorious battle over the Philistines, when they were able to recover the Ark of the Covenant, the prophet Samuel set up a stone and named it Ebenezer, or 'stone of help.' (1 Samuel 7:12-13) He dedicated it as a monument to God's help. The site from that time symbolized God's aid in their miraculous triumph. An Ebenezer, symbolically, can be anything that reminds us of God's presence and help. May my gratitude, as I dedicate time each day to record it, be a monument to God's help in my life. For I hope, by His good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. I hope on the way home I mount each trial I encounter with His love. A love that is ever present because each day I am grateful.