Monday, November 23, 2020

The Grateful Heart

 

“O magnify the Lord with me and let us magnify His name together.”

Psalm 34:3


I am going to be both very predictable and very seasonal today.

If you are reading this and thinking to yourself - I wonder if he is going to speak on thankfulness, BINGO, you would win the prize.

But 2020 hardly seems like a year we can pick much to be grateful and thankful for does it?

How can we be grateful with Covid-19 in our midst?

250K+ fellow Americans are dead.

We have learned new terms like social distancing and contact tracing and had to put them into practice.

Everybody is telling us not to gather in large groups even when that large group is just your extended family.

Thanksgiving gatherings are all but forbidden and who knows what our Christmas traditions will be like this year.

2020 has also brought us a contentious national presidential election that still is not decided and which has polarized Americans of every stripe like never before.

Add into the mix now lawsuits in several states over voting irregularities and it promises to be a bumpy ride between now and inauguration day.

This year has brought us violent riots, protests, looting and racial strife in cities near and far, the likes of which we have not seen in decades.

Few have come away unscathed.

We had calls to defund the police on one side and defend the police on the other.  Rallies for and rallies against.

In a society or culture that has been buffeted by so many traumas recently it is easy, some would even say justifiable, that gratitude would fall to the wayside.

Yet, with all of that recent history and a whole lot more I am still here today to exhort us to maintain a grateful heart and a thankful attitude in each of our personal lives.

Let’s look more closely at gratitude this week...

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