Gratitude is a powerful state of mindfulness that can shift our focus from darkness to light.
I am honoring it by giving thanks for the many blessings bestowed upon me and my family.
I am grateful for the teachers who are the cornerstones of our children’s schools and the lifeblood of education.
I am grateful for opportunities to pursue new adventures, experiences so that we may never grow stagnant as a people.
I am grateful for books- the old-fashioned kind with paper and print- for they whisk my imagination off to far off lands and lead me to a place where daily worries aren't invited.
I am grateful for young people. They are couriers of hope and champions of ideals. They are human sparklers by which the world is ignited in a light so bright and so effervescent that darkness itself loses its soul.
I am grateful for my father who is and will always be my tallest pillar of intellect, wit, and virtue.
I am grateful for siblings for they signify the ever-diversified array of DNA that brews and dispenses individual uniqueness and beauty.
I am grateful for health care professionals whose very mission is to ensure that the rest of us live optimal lives.
I am grateful for faith. Faith draws us ever closer to the divine. It encourages us to hope, it offers humanity an invitation to enter into true communion. Faith has the power to strengthen and consolidates us as a people. It is faith that allows us to cling to light amid the darkness.
I am grateful for true friendship. True friends are a source of sun amidst the clouds. They are fade-resistant and serve as warriors for wounded hearts. They take the sting out of solitude, sweeten Life’s “sours,” and tuck their angelic wings beneath their cloak as they pave the way for our protection. True friends are God’s whispered reminders that He is with us always.
I am grateful for people’s differences. Much as a kaleidoscope creates beauty with light and mirrors, so, too, does God create each of us to reflect His mastery of distinction. We are each fashioned with purpose, designed in His image, and incarnating His infinite perception of patterns and prisms. Our uniqueness, our individuality, and our differences are variegated reflections of Divine Love.
I am grateful for the change of seasons. Seasons remind us that life is not meant to be idle; change is part of being alive. Seasons are Nature’s crisp metaphor, nudging us to notice the blessings behind the raindrops and the warmth buried beneath the cold. In the changing of seasons, we recognize our own mortal circle: new life, abundant growth, time of harvest, and the final preparation… for new life again.
Today, I am grateful for love. “Love” is an oft used term to designate soft affection for material items or culinary offerings.
But today I give thanks for real love, the kind that is born of complete selflessness, swells with compassion, champions mercy, and is unconditionally abundant.
Today, I give thanks for the kind of love that lifts our burdens toward heaven with outstretched hands.
Today, I give thanks for the one true love extended to all of us, difficult to see but easy to experience.
Today I give thanks... for God.
