One day, I realized my faith had caught the sniffles. A little snot here, a hacking cough there … nothing huge, but something that required attention. You never know when neglected spiritual viruses might escalate into consumption of the soul.
Checking my spiritual temperature, I found that a crucial element of my faith was missing: thankfulness. I was cruising along, performing all my faith duties, but something was lacking. There was no gratitude in my spirit for the mundane blessings of every day.
Gratitude had become a casualty of my overstressed schedule.
Seriously, isn’t life really made up of 90 percent routine, so easy to overlook as Papa God’s intentional blessing? We get up every morning, our hearts faithfully beating, think with a mostly functioning brain, walk on legs that carry us where we want to go, grab our toothbrush with fingers that actually grip and brush teeth that are still attached to pink gums, yet we never give the same ole’, same ole’ a second thought.
We begin to feel entitled rather than blessed with the everyday mundane.
Thankfulness for the details of life is a power-packed element of spiritual health that keeps our Creator-creation perspective intact. It’s the acute awareness that the source of our usually unconsidered everyday blessings — such as a warm breeze, lungs to draw it in, senses to feel its pleasure — is the Master Designer.
Looking at it this way, the mundane becomes downright thrilling! We see annoyingly noisy kids as happy, carefree children; work duties become a privilege many are without; and household chores wouldn’t take so long if we lived in a grass hut swarmed by flies.
As we cultivate everyday gratitude, worship for our Provider boosts our spiritual health better than Grandma’s chicken soup.
So maybe it’s time to slap the spiritual thermometer under my tongue … and yours. An injection of thankfulness is just what the Great Physician ordered.
“No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:18 TLB.
