Writers sometimes have blocks. "Is there anything stirring in my spirit anymore?" I wonder, since the fingers haven't flown on the keyboard for many days and weeks.
Now I know it was because this little child of God needed a "time-out." The block found a word, finally, and the word was ingratitude. Ingratitude can block the best of intentions and any sense of true joy in a life. In fact, I'm learning now that ingratitude can even block our intimate relationship with a loving, ever-giving, over-flowing God. Today I see that He has been trying to heap gifts upon me, his child, but I haven't perceived them as gifts - wow, didn't some of them even feel like hurdles? Even like a "thorn in the flesh?"
The life-changing book I am reading, which removed blindness from my eyes and the terrible block of ingratitude, is titled One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. She quotes Luke 17:15-16, the familiar event where Jesus (Yeshua) cleansed ten lepers and only one returns to give thanks: He asks, "Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then He said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well."
Voskamp continues, "Wait. Hadn't Jesus already completely healed him? Exactly like the other nine who were cured who hadn't bothered to return and thank Him. So what does Jesus mean, 'Your faith has made you well.'? Had I underinterpreted this passage, missed some hidden mystery? I slow down and dig. I read His words in Young's Literal Translation: 'And Jesus said to him, 'Having risen, be going on, thy faith has saved thee.' Saved thee? It's sozo in the Greek. The literal meaning of sozo is - to save. It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus (Yeshua) came to live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo - the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks.
"Our very saving is associated with gratitude. Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves. We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."
Psalm 50:23: He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.
The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God - even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion - this prepares the way for God to show His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him."
Oh, how many years I have read and quoted from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Messiah Yeshua, yet wondering in my heart how I could ever possibly do this! And so I have begun to follow Ann Voskamp's example, living life to the fullest by looking for every small, normally unnoticed gift that God sets before me every day. This morning I take up pen again and write what I am thankful for:
Husband's early-morning footsteps creaking upstairs above me
The warming sound of the steaming coffee pot
Kitty paws batting at string
Southern gentleman - my husband! - backing car up to sidewalk so I don't step in snow-mounds
Communication with an old friend - that glint of hope that our friendship hasn't died
It wells up in me, now, this new attitude of giving thanks in everything! It transforms my attitude and dispels fear. If even the thing I feared is something God can use for my good, what is there to fear?
Voskamp sums it up: "The miracle of thanksgiving, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small things, the moments will add up."
It is yet early in the day today and yet the moments of gratitude are adding up - and the block is gone as I fully embrace this sozo He gives me! I am preparing the way by sacrificing thank offerings - fully aware that some of the thanks really could be - and will be - sacrifices.
