Gratitude shapes how you experience life. It’s easy to be grateful when everything goes as planned, but if you can be grateful through adversity, then you will feel the most profound impact of gratitude. Gratitude does not take away pain and sadness, but it does allow you to shift your focus toward what you can control.
Gratitude is more than a mental exercise. We can’t just make mental notes of the good things God has done for us and then thank God for the service provided.
Thomas Merton wrote that to be grateful means we “recognize the love of God in everything He has given us . . . Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.” The grateful person knows God’s grace, not because people tell him/her but because he/she experiences it. This makes all the difference, adds Merton.
Prayer: Author of life and grace help us to be grateful for one another, for all that we have in our lives and all that we will meet today. Amen.
Reflection/Journal Activity
1) What does ingratitude look like for you?
2) How do you cultivate gratitude in your life?
3) What are you grateful for today?
___________
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000), p.33
The Attitude of Gratitude
Gratitude shapes how you experience life. It’s easy to be grateful when everything goes as planned, but if you can be grateful through adversity, then you will feel the most profound impact of gratitude. Gratitude does not take away pain and sadness, but it does allow you to shift your focus toward what you can control.
Gratitude is more than a mental exercise. We can’t just make mental notes of the good things God has done for us and then thank God for the service provided.
Thomas Merton wrote that to be grateful means we “recognize the love of God in everything He has given us . . . Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.” The grateful person knows God’s grace, not because people tell him/her but because he/she experiences it. This makes all the difference, adds Merton.
Prayer: Author of life and grace help us to be grateful for one another, for all that we have in our lives and all that we will meet today. Amen.
Reflection/Journal Activity
1) What does ingratitude look like for you?
2) How do you cultivate gratitude in your life?
3) What are you grateful for today?
___________
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000), p.33