Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 5

Hi friends.

how is your week? are you seeing the gifts easily this week, or are you having to search for them?

I hope that in both, the easy and the hard, you see the gifts.

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How do we lay our hands open for the hard eucharisto when we know it will hurt?

when we see the change, the times out of our comfort zone, the times of waiting

how do we look those things in the eye and open our hands and hearts to them?

the daily practice of the gifts, the discipline of gratitude is the way to daily practice the delight of God.

"Daily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now. But awakening to joy awakens to pain."

"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to fully living" We can't have one without the other. We can't live a life fully aware of the blessings and gifts without feeling and seeing the pain. But should we go back to the numbness?

What will we lose?

Health?

Comfort?

Money?

Security?

and when will we lose it?

What in the world, in a world of certain loss, is grace?

What counts as a blessing, as a gift? And what are all the other moments?

Every dark woods has words, messages from Christ that we need a lens to see. That lens is eucharisto. With thankful hearts, we see not as the world sees, but as the Word sees. And the Word is not a book on a shelf, but a human man who knows pain. 

All that God makes is good. So what are the dark woods? Could it just be the perspective? The way our eyes see the bad?

But what perspective sees good in divorce, cancer, and dying children?  

He is involved. He does let it happen. And when our aching hearts cry and wail and cry that it's His fault and He did it, he holds. He soothes. His ways are not our ways. He gave the manna. He gives the life-sustaining mystery.

Sometimes it takes time to answer the hard eucharisto. 

It's just our eyes that are bad. 

When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't it all become gift?

For He might not have.

Christ comes to earth, dies on a cross, and all humanity recieves the biggest blessing of all.

Life, through death,

Through pain.

Through hard eucharisto.

Through a Savior who recieved the hard with open hands.

"It is suffering that has the realist possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And the grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering"

"This is the hard eucharisto: The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard disciple to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good. "

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Here are a few questions for you to think about and answer. Nicole has shared with us her answers.

What circumstances/situations have you seen the hard eucharisto?

It was through several tough relationships that I saw the hard eucharisteo.  I always found myself asking "why, why, why", but God was working all the while.  There was GOOD happening in the midst of all the ugly.

How have you seen His goodness in the hard eucharisto?

I think His goodness is even more clear through the hard eucharisteo.  It's not easy seeing the good when all you feel like you see is the bad.  While our feelings see one way, our hearts can actually see clearly.  In the hard times that I have chosen to pick out the blessings in what seems like the curses, is when I see the Lord's goodness the most.