Week 3 Day 4: Gratitude
Question: Can you name out loud what you are most grateful for?
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Transcript of Video:
I find it sometimes amiable to say, “Thank you, God” when I wake up in the morning, but more often I’m in more of a hurry to get the alarm clock turned off. But certainly when I go to the Chapel to pray, it is with a sense of thanksgiving for this opportunity to be willing to deal with prayer. And at breakfast time I am ever able to thank God for the gifts that he has given me and ask for his blessings throughout the day. And then, as I said, there are various things that happen: good things happen spontaneously, and I say under my breath, “Thank you, God.”
Very often, these days my private prayer very often is in Japanese so, [speaking Japanese] “Kami ni kansha” to God we thank. I don’t know – these things happen so spontaneously sometimes that it’s hard to think of particular times or ways throughout the day. It isn’t a continuous thing, because as a human being I sometimes find myself concentrating on some task that has to be done, meeting a timetable and trying to get everything done that I think I need to. But when I do get something accomplished or suddenly an inspiration comes – I try to write a sermon – I do say within myself, within or in silence, “Thank you, God.” “Kami ni kansha.”
-Br. David Allen
Can you name out loud what you are most grateful for?
For Life
My partner, our health and our ability to serve others: family, friends, community, our Cities.
I am grateful despite my manic episodes and struggle with depression my friends family and Parish have not run from me but have been a source, encouragement, and Grace. I honestly do not know where I would be without them. The resources from the SSJE and also the Fellowship of St John especially St. John’s day at the monastery have also been a source of learning and grace.
My good HEALTH. It allows me to love my family and share their lives, joys and sorrows. I am able to travel and explore and serve the Lord in many ways.
p.s. I am also grateful for my furry friends who are just like me, apart from physical appearance.
I am most thankful for family, of every sort…relational, church, close friends who feel like family etc.
The Lord allowing me to Wake up each day!!
My family and my health.
I am thankful for Br. David’s meditation for today. And I am going to try to remember the Japanese phrase “Kami ni kansha.” I find myself saying, “Thank you, God!” many times each day. Often this happens when I catch a little glimpse of God’s created beauty… a butterfly fluttering by, a hawk soaring or just sitting on a lamppost, some raindrops (I live in drought-plagued California). But I also say thanks when something seems to work out just right. In 2013, I went on a mission trip to Haiti. Well, in preparation for the trip, I realized I had to apply for a new passport. The Friday I left the house to accomplish the task I thought that it would be a real hassle. But I already had the application and discovered I could put my hands on all the information I needed, including my expired passport from twenty years ago. I found a photographer through the yellow pages and got the photos right away. I went directly to the public library with my fee in hand, but had to go through the quick process of getting a library card. Then the staffer who would process my application was on break, but a co-worker kindly offered to complete the transaction since I was ready with all my materials. Wow! Within two or three hours I had gotten through an ordeal that I expected to take up a week or two. My passport arrived two weeks later. (It was another sign to me that God wanted me to go on that mission trip.) I couldn’t help but say “Thanks, God, that was so kind of you to take care of that for me. You’re awesome!”
FAITH. I am grateful for the faith that keeps me going, helps me to help others, gets me out of bed when my world is falling apart and I’d rather just pull the covers over my head. Just knowing that God is there to lean on is such a blessing. I thank God for that blessing every day.
I’m most grateful that all my family members are in good health and safe. My wife, two sons and both grand daughters. Most importantly I’m glad to have personal relationship with our God.
…Learning especially about Love
Like Brother David, my waking thought is to thank God for the night past and for the blessings of a new day, whatever it brings. Throughout the day, just arrow prayers of thanks to God for so many blessings in my life, and I realise how lucky and fortunate both my husband and I are. For our lovely family of sons, their wives and grandchildren, for good friends, for our health and for being able to deal with health issues, for our food and shelter and I thank God that he gives me the opportunity to help others where I am led. At the end of the day, just before sleep comes, I give thanks to God for the day I have had, whatever it has consisted of.
I am grateful to still have a clear mind at my age and to still enjoy the challenge of such a series as this Of course I’m grateful to God for my family and friends, but realize as time goes on – I need to be able to exist on my own WITH GOD
p.s. am grateful for your website and all the people who are interacting….I do feel a connection.
I have been experiencing a lot of anxiety and desolation but I know that through the scriptures and prayer God will bring me through.
Thank God the chance to make a difference
I thank God for a safe home and a good husband. I also than God for His Holy Spirit that guides me if I wait, pray and listen.
I am most grateful to have Jesus as my savior!
For the remarkable life I have been given. For the ability to help others through this life. And forever blessed with dear family, friends and colleagues, who make this life so fulfilling. Thank you God.
There are several things I am most grateful for, and I believe they are all aspects of the same thing: that God loves me and gave me life, and then that He is the God of second chances and has regularly brought me back to Himself.
My husband and the gift of abiding in God and God in me
Consciousness of my need for God.
I am thankful for being born into a Christian family where I could find love and forgiveness even in hardship. To know God is with me in all adversity. I am forever grateful.
My family, my cats, my friends around the world–who are like family to me. When my husband died, I had to adjust to not being part of a couple anymore; the first few years were devastating in ways that I didn’t even realize at the time, but as time has passed, I’ve become more and more grateful for the life we had together and for how my journey of healing has opened my entire being up to joy.
I am most grateful for relationships. It is in the connecting, in various ways, I think I am most apt to experience God.
For God’s everlasting mercy
…learning, which helps one understand many things, especially love…
I am most grateful for my life.
I’m grateful in the beautiful cloud of sound created by the musicians at tonight’s Taize service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, CT, and the space and peace it gave us in which to connect with God. #SSJEtime #gratitude #Lent2015
Sophrania, the Taize service sounds wonderful.
My wonderful husband and adult children (plus son-in-law and grandchildren) and for the fact that our children are so open with us about their lives and struggles. For faith and a sense of purpose in life. As so many others have said – for health, basic security, and the natural beauty of creation. An attitude of gratitude will take you a long way!
The beauty of the earth especially where I live, the mountains, forests, the rivers of Trinity County, CA.
for all of God’s blessings.
Sitting with God in silence and absorbing His love.
I am most grateful for my daughter, my son, and the love of my life, who taught me that true love and God’s love are real and unending.
My family, especially my children, our home and health
I am grateful to God for so many things. My children and grandchildren who are all leading lives of goodness and service.
For myself I am still ill but in many ways I am better!!
Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name.
I am grateful for my daughter, home, blessings I have received, my family and friends, but most of all for the love of Christ.
I give thanks for God in my life; for my work, my family and friends, my dog, my home, my spiritual teachers, for time and space and freedom to appreciate it all. Amen
my family
My health–mental and physical
I am most grateful for my wife and the wonderful relationship we have. Very loving and giving mutually. I am also grateful for our continued good health and happiness.
I am most grateful for being shown time and time again, and it happened again this week, in a way that that leaves no doubt, that I am always being protected by God. Always.
I am most thankful for spiritual moments shared with my wife Elizabeth
This question hits me right where I live. I am most grateful for my wife; we married at 68 and 77, each of us grateful mothers of strong, healthy children of similar ages, and grandchildren as well. For me this was the first time I knew honest to God love for and from my spouse, with God’s help and guidance. A different, liberating life it has been. The way life is supposed to be lived, I never knew it would be available to me. Since 2002, this has me in the business of turning around into a positive, forward thinking person, appreciating Now, with everything to live for, thanking God everyday and more, for his Blessing. Thank you God from the bottom of our hearts.
I’m grateful for my dear husband and daughters. And I’m grateful that I can be honest with God and God never stops loving me.
His love, grace and mercy. And the promise that this life here is as bad as it will ever be.
Without a doubt the thing I am most thankful is my wife. She is a continual reminder of God’s grace. There is nothing I have done that merits her love for me. She loves me against all wisdom and against all odds. She loves me unconditionally. She is not God but her love reminds me of God’s love. I try to recognize her love but I fall short. When I think of how great her love is for me and then Ithink of God’s limitless love for me and all of creation, it is more than I can comprehend.
Grateful does not begin to describe how I feel about my wife’s love and the opportunity I have to love her in return.
I am most grateful for God, my husband, and my grown children. A day does not go by without my prayers of thanksgiving for God’s gift to me.
For the love of God and that He does not give up on me ever. I am His beloved child.
Amen!
Yes, Melinda, I feel the same way. God loves me! This is truly my most grateful
thought!
All my wonderful family, friends and the beautiful creation that surrounds me is such a blessing and I give thanks for it all daily, but the thought that God loves, imperfect, stumbling through this earthly life, me, is truly amazing!
For God in my life.
The one thing I am MOST grateful for is God’s love. There are many other things for which I am grateful but His love covers all.
my daughter … such a lovely light …
I am forever grateful that the God in me recognizes the God in those with whom I come in contact.
easy. my kids being the way they are. Thank you Lord you have blessed me so much with my children.
The LOVE and Friendships I have known.
I am most grateful for God’s never-ending Grace! His love for me, the gifts he’s given me, including motherhood, friendships.
I am grateful for faithful friends who walk with me into the unknown of God’s plans for us.
I’m 71 years old. I’ve worked (hands on), in construction my whole adult life. I’ve worn my body out, knees, hearing, my heart. I’ve been carless and broken my body. I say thank you to God for the doctors and surgeons and especially the nurses. I say thank you to God for my wife who has nurtured and loved me and taken care of me fo 50 years. Some how through all these years God has watched over me and Blessed me. I say thank you God!
My first thought was I am so grateful for my grandchildren – they give me so much joy. And their parents, my children, who are teaching them to love by creating a warm, loving family to surround them.
I am grateful God has brought me and my husband to Canada to be with them in Vancouver. He led us to the wonderful Christ Church Cathedral, and the community of friends we found there. We are now Home. Thanks be to God.
My kids. Hands down. My kids.
Love, the second time around. It arrived unexpectedly and saved me. It makes me realize I must pay it forward.
I am grateful that, by the grace of God, I was born into a stable and caring home in a country not torn with war and strife. I have enough resources to live comfortably and not worry about where my next meal is coming from. I have a husband that supports me and doesn’t stand in the way of my personal and spiritual growth. I am indeed blessed!
Wow Lisa…your first sentence articulates the thoughts that often run through my mind and heart.
Life.
Many years ago I signed up for a daily exchange with Barbara Crafton from The Geranium Farm. I receive an email that starts the sentence – Let us bless the Lord – and I respond with the rest – thanks be to God! It is a wonderful way to remember to thank God just for being able to respond to that email.
I write three reasons I am grateful in my daily journal. It could be specific experiences or just bring thankful to be breathing in a new day. This practice has created a continual well of gratitude that flows ever greater.
I could never name “one” thing for which I am grateful, for there is so much…to start is to be unable to stop. It is like being at the shore, watching wave after wave come in, with no end in sight. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1). Gratefulness is a rhythm in my life, like the waves breaking at the shore. Everything is gift. I am grateful to have this realization.
This is beautiful! Grace upon grace, like waves, or like breathing, which is God being as close to us as possible!
I guess I see gratitude as another form of an ongoing conversation with God, just as I would say Thank You to another person when I noticed a kindness or blessing. Gratitude springs up as I am mindful of the many ways in which blessings are granted. Even in the midst of struggles, they are always more than I might see at any given moment.
While spending about three weeks or so knocked down by the flu this winter, I wound up watching a lot more TV than I have in the past 18 years. I was struck by the vast proportion of shows now showing that focus on the more negative things in life. Aside from very old TV reruns and PBS, 98% of what was on seemed to focus on darker things and sometimes almost to glorify and magnify them. I had no idea there were so many variations of crime shows, judge shows, and screamy talk shows on now. Yikes! My remote skipped past a woeful parade of abysmally failed relationships, incredibly damaged people, fear, crimes past, present, real, and imaginary, murder, abuse, hatred, entitlement, people yelling at other people, screaming about their pet issues (as if this will make us hear them better?) not to mention people seeking notoriety, greed, or power in shallow or dysfunctional ways. I was never so thankful for PBS’s offerings in all my life as those shows mostly concentrated on creating, building, learning, and the like.
This experience highlighted to me how it can be too easy to focus on the negative, which can make us feel overwhelmed, helpless, and then ungrateful in the face of it all, as if that is all there is in the world.
When I feel this sort of negative spiral happening, it is a call to me that I need to exercise my appropriate power over what I allow in my environment, pull back from the relentless barrage of the overwhelming, and guard my heart more carefully — in this case by choosing to watch positive and building shows instead and eventually, to go back to my hardly-any-TV ways. When I look for the good on which I can focus I find that I more readily see what I am looking for, and gratitude wells up once more.
So true.
I have stopped reading the newspaper and watching the news for this past month, and the positive effect on my spirit has been astounding. I am now finally developing a daily prayer routine after a lifetime of Sunday-only worship; I am also very open to this Lenten study, and my musical composition for our Easter service is progressing well. Thanks be to God!
I wake each morning grateful for another day, to love, to be loved, to learn, to feel, to experience, and to try again to do it better, with God’s help. He is not done with me yet.
I am thankful for another chance. An another chane to forgive myself and others and try to be more kind than I was the day before
I’m grateful for my wonderful husband, satisfying job, warm and welcoming church, loving family, caring students. But I’m most grateful to God for giving it all and helping me to hold it together with love.
My husband and my son.
I have been blessed with a wonderful wife, family, and life. And I thank God for all these blessings, because without Him I have nothing
I am usually just deeply grateful be BEING
I work with Refugees. When I hear their stories, I know how much I have to be grateful for. I am continually amazed that they too continue to be grateful, through all their discouragements.
In a word? Life. Opportunity. People.
Amen, to this. I thank God every day just for being, and especially for having health in body, mind and spirit. But gratitude largely comes from knowing how much worse things could be, that’s why people who have everything sometimes are not grateful. I give thanks for people who do God’s work in helping others, healing the world, working for peace and justice. Because it is so devastating to know all the cruelty, violence, suffering and injustice in the world, it is a necessary antidote to learn about the good things people are doing. Thank you for your work.
In general, my entire family,
in particular, my parents.
I am most grateful for my wife, my adult children, and my grandchildren. True gifts to me.
Being loved by God. My family. My friends. This beautiful world.
My son. This sweet, silly, kind, smart, healthy little boy gives me so much purpose, and reminds me of God’s redeeming grace, of His miracles in the every day and extraordinary, and to be in awe of God’s creation. My son, how he formed in my womb — lungs and fingernails and a personality — how he has grown into a little boy, how he is destined and with purpose, my son and every person is a miracle, and in that, I am grateful and more focused on God’s love.
I make Gratitude Beads — usually a set of 25 beads with a cross or crucifix or a labyrinth between the end and the beginning. I have many of these sets which I have kept for myself just because the color or touch are pleasing. I leave them on my nightstand so that they are retty much the last thing I see when I turn off the light at night. Being a night person, I’m not much on praying or anything civilized in the morning. I find that seeing them or maybe just picking one up will cause me to end my day with a string of things for which I am grateful — the kids that I work with, the job that I have, the glory of the world, the animals that walk through my backyard, my beloved cats.
What a good idea. Thank you!
What a good idea! I have a set of Anglican prayer beads and this would be another great use for them.
I’m going to try this too! What a wonderful way to end the day.
Knowing Jesus, being able to serve Him in a loving, committed community of faith, being healthy enough to do so.
I also don’t know if I have a thing to be grateful for. Like Linda, my healthy body and the ability to walk. but there seem to be so many things I should or maybe should. When I first read this question my mind literally went blank.Then I remembered what Brother David said about thanking God in the morning and I remembered I do that each morning and night, I thank God for watching over me and my family.
I am thankful for my husband. New lives have been knit from our joy and we watch together as the generations continue.
I wake every morning and thank God for Julie, my wife. Thirty three years ago she walked into my life and changed me forever. Her journey with God infected me. Her greatest gift to me was to show me that God is real, just as Gods greatest gift to me here on this dimension of our existence is a spiritually grounded soul mate.
Thank you God for being.
That says it all
1. My wonderful children. Thank you, God.
2. My wonderful siblings. Thank you, God.
3. My wonderful friends. Thank you, God.
Not merely life, but the consciousness to experience it.
I am most grateful for the fact that I am in good health and that I have a comfortable and secure retirement when so many do not.
Most thankful for loving relationships and a faithful God.
I am often running so fast and in so many different directions in my work that I fail to take stock of the blessings in my life. Many years ago a wise clergy person told me, “Addiction wants gratitude for recovery.” There is power in gratitude, and mystery as well. I find when I observe a daily practice of conscious gratitude, my estimation of the relevant importance of things in my life changes. Though I am grateful for both, family grows; work shrinks.
I love that last sentence. So true.
I usually get to spend a few minutes with my eldest son, who struggles with social things. We list four things of the day; a proud thing, a thing to do better/regret , a happy thing and the person we are most grateful for today. It helps him and focuses on being positive and moving forward thankfully
I am grateful for my family. And though I am grateful for what I thave, I am thankful for God’s creation.
The loving relationship I have with my husband: this is the platform from which I feel secure and brave enough to work and share love in the world, in the church, with my clients, and in my extended family. Part of my love with my husband is our shared love for our beautiful sons and our animals and our home; I feel blessed beyond measure….
I am most grateful for the steady and faithful love of my husband, and for the gift of motherhood.
Just what I was going to say!
Without hesitation, the gift of my Children from God. They are a source of strength, love, and pride; each one bringing their own individual gifts to this life and the beautiful Grandchildren that we have. My Life has been blessed with many wonderful chapters, but when challenges arise, I am always thankful for my Girls and their support.
I don’t know that I have a “most grateful for” something. There are so many times in my life that I can look back and have overwhelming gratitude. I can also name so many things at this moment I’m grateful for. I’ve made it a priority towards the end of my day to reflect back and give thanks for God’s grace over and over during my day. Some of the things I already gave a quick ‘thank you’ as it was unfolding, but I name them again. I know that I likely miss a lot, as I don’t always see all that God is during may day…and for this I am also thankful.
God’s grace.
I’m most grateful for my healthy body
Thank you for your brief and honest response. I was contemplating all sorts of bombastic responses, things that I “should” be grateful for, when you made me realize that indeed I am most grateful that I have been blessed with good health that allows me to live and serve each day.
I am most grateful for my family
I am grateful many times daily for God’s love that flows through others,
1) particularly “church” people that teach the course I am taking at UVA, Religions on America, books that aid in our learning of God’s love. 2) for national stability which allows all of us to work, and pray and live for the coming of God’s Kingdom. So, I pray for stability internationally, resolution of conflicts, etc.
3) The beauty of God’s earth and creation provided to us of water, animals to assist our daily lives, and produce for food, knowing that spring days are soon to arrive. More prayers for environmental stability and our willingness to choose conservation methods to preserve creation.
Thanks be to God.
Marta, your comments reminded me to stop and be grateful in all conditions. In the big and the small.
The presence of God…continually…
I am grateful for a new chance, everyday, no matter what.
Br. David, I do the same thing!
Sorry, a slip of a finger sent my reply before it was finished.
I’ll try again. I end the day as I begin it with prayer. Very often it is just a simple “Thank you!”. Thinking of that for which I am most thankfull: it is not things, though I do like them; it could be family, friends, and all those, including many agnostics, who have help in my journey; for God’s creation; for His gifts, His Son, free-will. The answer is “God”.
Right now, I would say my close friends and colleagues. Let’s see if at the end of a busy day I can confirm or add to it.
Confirmed. I have wonderful colleagues.
Gods love and acceptance
My wife and more.