Poet Ranier Maria Rilke points us in the right direction when he says, "The more the soul praises, the stronger it grows." Rilke is suggesting that praise is about the condition of our soul, not the circumstances of our days. Gratitude strengthens our soul by focusing...
I'm grateful for work more important than how I happen to feel about it on any given day.
How do we come to realize love? By surrendering to life just as it is. Gradually our eyes open. I think of a good friend who buried her young son. Years later someone asked her if she felt that he had been cheated by life because his years were few. Her response was...
The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
In true love it is not we who love the afflicted in God; it is God in us who loves them. When we are in affliction, it is God in us who loves those who wish us well. Compassion and gratitude come down from God, and when they are exchanged in a glance, God is present...
We live in a society that breeds discontent by defining success as bigger homes, nicer cars, and fuller closets. Gratitude is the cure.
If God forgives us instantly and completely, then who are we to sulk in despair over our failures? If God finds no pleasure in condemning, then we have no right to find some sort of sadistic pleasure in self-contempt. To allow the sins of yesterday, or even an hour...
The basic issue for the Christian, it seems to me, is whether we believe we are stewards or owners of what we possess. A good steward receives gratefully anything his Lord gives to him. But he must account for it and use it wisely. We Christians also believe that this...
Holy delight and joy is the great antidote to despair and is a wellspring of genuine gratitude—the kind that starts at our toes and blasts off from our loins and diaphragm through the top of our head, flinging our arms and our eyes and our voice upward toward our good...
Paul actually expects Christ to be encountered as his people share with one another a whole range of verbal ministries in the congregational. For example, as they “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual song,” with gratitude in their hearts to God, they will fulfill the...