Thanksgiving

There is this thing that people are doing on Facebook. Since November 1^st they have stated something they are thankful for each day. I haven’t participated in this, but I have plenty of things that I am thankful for. I guess since thankfulness can be such a personal thing and since such personal private matters I usually write about as opposed to generally just throwing them out there I have ended up here. A lot of the posts I have seen have been thankful for things or people or events. I too am thankful for these. Home, good friends, and nice things are all blessings from God that I was never promised and many times take for granted. Over the last couple of weeks when I see a posts of thankfulness I reflect myself on these things but also on what as a whole I am most thankful for.

Faith Hope & Love

Faith is a big mystery to me. It is stirred up from the Holy Spirit from some secret well of God’s goodness. Most the time I feel as though I am spinning my wheels trying to muster up some small seed of faith. Then out of nowhere, when I am exhausted from my own fruitless efforts, the Holy Spirit plants a seed of faith and waters it with the word of God. Sometimes as it grows I am stretched and pulled to my limits but I am thankful for the gift of faith. It truly is a gift from God. In all honesty I wish I had more. It is the cry of my heart right now to have more confidence in things hoped for and assurance of the things not yet seen.

Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. A person can have so many hopes and expectations. I find myself hoping for things all the time but this last year I realized it is not what you hope for but what you hope in that truly matters. All of the small little things we hope for mean and amount to nothing outside of our hope in Christ. All will pass away and return to dust but Christ defeated death and lives. I am thankful for a Savior that I can hope in and who stands when all else passes away.

Love. I hate to admit, since I spend so much time pretending to be unaffected, but I really am a hopeless romantic. I love reading Jane Austen and hearing stories of expressions of love, but these are just cheap imitations of love. He continually reminds me that He is love and that my desire should be for Him and no imitation.  I am so thankful for a love that died on a tree, for a love that calls and restores. I am so very thankful for a love undeserved and unmerited and I wish I could and would relay it to more people.  In a world that puts so much emphasis on romantic love and expressions of love, it can be sometimes confusing trying to figure out what love really is or what it looks like. Love looks like Christ with the woman at the well, like Christ as he healed the sick and dying, like Christ as he prayed for those persecuting him, and like Christ as he died on a cross. I am so thankful for this great love.

I don’t even think my words here, as honest and open a I try to be, can really show my heart’s gratefulness for all God has done. We go through seasons in our lives and with each season God is sufficient to supply our every need. This year God has continually had to remind me of what I have when all else fades away. The verses that rang true on pages now play in my heart in a new way.  I am thankful for those that will remain: faith, hope, and love.