Blessings and Gratitude

There are times when I cannot help myself.  Some book read so many times it begs to be left alone in its retirement on the shelf catches my eye and gets pulled out for still another read.  Such happened recently with a book I first read back around 2013 and have since recommended to any number of folks.  Written by a woman named Ann Voskamp it has provided spiritual fodder for many women's groups.  Though it may be popular for such groups, it is a good read for men or women.  The title of the book is "1000 Gifts."   

The focus of the book is about living with a spirit of gratitude for the many blessings of God.  The author shares her year long journey with a Gratitude Journal in which she list 1000 blessings she counted as received from God.  The blessings are not things like a new car, or a bigger house, but things like the sound of birds singing, or being able to offer help to another person, or listening to children play.  What is true is that even in the most difficult of times and in the darkest of days, there are blessings which she calls gifts from God to be counted.  When I started my own Gratitude Journal long ago, I soon learned that no darkness can keep God from blessing us.  We may have to grow eyes to see more clearly in the darkness, but the blessings are there and they are there in abundance.  

Trust me on this one.  I am one, like many others, who has been in the darkness and counted the blessings.  Anyone who thinks about reading the book should be warned.  It might create a need for keeping a Gratitude Journal, or even a daily journal as it did with me.  However, the biggest thing to be received from Voskamp's book is a deepened awareness of how God is blessing us all the time in any and every circumstance of life.