Ponder with me for a second the topic of gardening. Let's purge the blackened husks of the over-fertilized and the under-watered and imagine an ideal plant. It's green, it's got a nice flower of your color and choosing. It's just about as happy as a plant can be. Think of a rose! Think of chrysanthemums. I'm pretty happy now, too. I'm glancing guiltily over to my windowsill collection and lamenting that none of them will ever share their "happiness" with me in the form of such blossoms...I'm looking at you, Bedraggled African Violet #1!
Back on point. We have our flower, we've had our fun getting here. But how did we get here? Sure, we dreamed this beauty up, but that's just it: we dreamed it. We didn't get our hands dirty, we didn't open up the roots, pick the choicest spot for sun, we didn't pick a beautiful pot or a healthy plot of dirt. These take time. These take energy and planning. I guess I'm also thinking of a plant that has some growth behind it, because if we chose to grow our metaphors from seeds that's a whole 'nother story.
What I'm trying to get at while enjoying wandering around the garden in my mind is that, like our metaphorical plant, growing an "attitude of gratitude" takes time and work. It is indeed something to enjoy like the sight of a flower, but an attitude of gratitude, as it was so infectiously put to me, is not simply an object in our lives. Rather, it shapes them.
How often do I let the things that I feel, the things that I want, the things that I think I "need," get in the way of what is important, what is absolute, and what is truly good? More times than I can count. We are told to pray "Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," in the prayer our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ teaches us in Matthew 6: 10. We are commanded to "rejoice always" in 1 Thessalonians 5: 16. As we follow David's example in Psalm 34: 1, we are to "bless the Lord at all times." We are told to "to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your minds" and also to "love your neighbor as yourself" in Matthew 22: 34-40. It's not about us at all. An excellent way to keep this focus is by being mindful of and grateful for the many blessings that we do have. These gifts from God surround us so consistently that we forget them and often complain only about what we haven't got, or what went wrong. We live in a fallen world. Disappointment can seem everywhere at times. But we are not of this fallen world, as Jesus says in John 15: 19, and this world is still part of God's perfect Creation. Rejoice that you have been here, that you are now, and that you will be with God the Father one day again, thanks to the selfless gift of the Son's death on the cross and resurrection for us.
I started this post a couple of weeks ago and couldn't seem to get back to it, both due to mental busyness and computer/internet issues. If I had published this previously, I would have had to include an update. Between then and now, I've learned some tough lessons with humility and gratitude. They were difficult because they were meaningful and worthwhile. I am blessed to have such loving, understanding, and patient people to call "family" in this life, and as my guides for learning to walk in God's ways for the next. I see His love and blessings through them, perhaps more often than they realize.
