Daily Meditation: "More And More"
Saturday, August 22, 2020
SCRIPTURE
"Finally, brothers and sisters and siblings, we urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, you should do so more and more." - 1 Thessalonians 4:1
REFLECTION
Have you ever had the experience of having a “Gratitude Renaissance” because you’ve run the risk of losing something precious? Perhaps nothing puts us in those spaces like a health scare of some kind. When I turned 40, I had a severe infection that on first glance caused my doctor to wonder if I didn’t have cancer. It turned out to not be the case, but the time spent being ill and then awaiting the results of the biopsy certainly caused a change in my thinking about things.
At that time, Ryan was three and Cooper was one. I had just started at a new church and we had just bought our first house. There was a lot going on, and suddenly everything had a different resonance to it. Every moment I had with Kath and the boys was heightened. Every moment in our first house was special. Every second of the day was imprinted in a way that can only come from wondering, seriously wondering, how many more seconds are left in front of you.
When that crisis passed, the thing I worked very hard not to lose was the acute awareness I had been given of how precious and fleeting every moment is that we have on this earth with the people that we love. In honoring the fragility of that time and those people, I strove to live more fully in each moment and not allow the renaissance of gratitude I had experienced to become nothing more than a memory as “normal” life got, as it does, more complicated and more busy.
I still work on that. These months at home during the pandemic have reiterated it to me again in new ways as I’ve been given some wonderful times to be with my family that I ordinarily wouldn’t have had. Life at FCCWP is very busy indeed, and of late quite stressful, yet each moment is a gift and fully living the appreciation of those moments is a way to “live and please God more and more.” Living in a state of perpetual gratitude honors the ways in which we have been blessed and makes each moment, even the tough ones, all the more precious.
More and more, the living of our gratitude honors the blessings we have been freely given.
PRAYER
God of Blessing, thank you for the gift of my life and the special people in it.
Amen.
Peace,
Shawn