when i was small, i was taught how to thank people that had
done something good for me. if someone gave me a gift, i was
told to thank them. we said a prayer at the dinner table in the
evening to bless the food, and when a child did not want to eat
the liver or the lima beans we were told to be thankful for the
food on our plate, because kids in china were starving.
that was a new one…thankful for lima beans? crazy talk.
well, eventually i got the idea of how to be polite, and the lessons
started to take root in my heart. sometimes i really meant it
when i said thank you. not about the lima beans, but, other
things that i liked better. some of the big things, like snow on a
school day, or for a barbie doll for my birthday.
but now, gratefulness doesn’t seem quite so simple. there’s more to
it than being thankful for good things. like Love, gratefulness has
a way of working on the heart. possibly about the time that humility
starts to be part of mix. and it gets into the heart and just does a real
bang up job for a few, twenty-thirty, years or so. God can whip
up quite the concoctions for the heart, added with it some living
and a bit of experience of heartbreak and loss, it goes to work,
slow but steady. eventually the idea about being grateful to God,
for um well i would have to say for everything, starts to take effect.
for good things as well as the not so good things, for the large and the
small things…and yes, i suppose even for lima beans.
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♥check out the one word carnival, the word being gratefulness this
time around. write, post, and link up at the blog of bridget chumbley.
