Daily Gifts

Have you ever counted your gifts?

I don't mean like a child seeing how many gifts they have under the Christmas tree - making sure no one else got more than them.

I mean, have you ever taken the time to stop and notice all the daily gifts God gives us?  Have you ever written them down?

Several years ago I was visiting a friend half way across the country when I came down with a nasty food-borne illness. As I lay in bed shivering under piles of blankets and pillows, she gave me a book to read. 

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp shares how she is learning to "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (I Thessalonians 5:18)

And so, my friend challenged me to think of seven things I was thankful for - even as she brought me to the clinic for antibiotics.

Before long I was writing them down as tangible reminders of God's faithful care and love. I began counting His everyday gifts to me.

Soon my first little book filled up. Then a second. Then a bigger book...

The next Thanksgiving Day that came along, I read through the several hundred gifts I had already recorded. Wow!! (I can't explain it better than that. You just have to try it for yourself!)

One day came the milestone of One Thousand Gifts. The number that Ann Voskamp challenged me to reach.

But I couldn't stop there. I have kept coming back to this discipline through the years. At times it has been the overflow of a joyful, blessed heart.  

At other times it has been a purposeful task to redirect my thoughts and emotions.

  

But no matter how I approach this list,
I don't want to just work up a thankful "feeling,"
but actually to:

"Praise GOD, from Whom all blessings flow."

"Let us daily praise God for common mercies - common as we frequently call them, and yet so priceless that when deprived of them we are ready to perish."Charles Spurgeon