Grateful Heart
The Thanksgiving holiday this month reminds me that a grateful heart is a healthy woman’s best emotional vitamin. It makes the continual adjustments we inevitably face in the ministry easier to handle. Gratefulness is a comfortable compassion. It enriches our lives manyfold, allowing us to enjoy any size blessing, not just the biggies.
Gratefulness accepts each situation at face value, allowing us to see how it enriches our lives. For instance, it reminds me each Monday how blessed I am to be able to do my laundry in the comfort and convenience of my home instead of lugging piles of dirty clothes to the laundromat. Interestingly, if I was at the laundromat, gratefulness would remind me how blessed I am not to be pounding my dirty garments on the rocks of the river bank. Gratefulness isn’t visionary, it accepts what is instead of longing for what could be. Gratefulness cannot dwell in a heart filled with bitterness.
Like internal smog, bitterness obscures our spiritual sight. It keeps us from enjoying what God has given us. As long as we allow bitterness to dwell within we can never be grateful for the laundromat experience because we feel we deserve the washer/dryer in our home. We’ll assure ourselves we’ve been cheated and list all the ways life has shortchanged us.
But if we daily pray, “Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me,” we will rid ourselves of this disease of discontent. By repenting we allow the Holy Spirit to wash the windows of our heart. And then we can clearly see all that God has done to bless us.
