SWEET HOUR OF THANKSGIVING

Our house church family is going through a really beautiful season lately. One thing I've been loving is how much people are genuinely interested in being together and spending time with each other.

Last Sunday, after our house church gathering in the morning we shared a potluck lunch together, which was pretty amazing [as always]. A few people couldn't stick around but some of us did and our conversation started to drift into an exploration of "What Makes Us Happy?"

Most assume that what makes us happiest is money or fame. But there have been plenty of academic studies which disprove that theory. In fact, I just recently wrote a blog for my employer about this and I got to bring that up in our conversation with the house church family.

I've also blogged quite a bit about this here on my personal blog.

It's also true that those who win the Lottery are typically bankrupt, divorced, estranged from their families and in debt [or sometimes even dead] after only a year or so.

So, if money and fame and wealth don't make us happy, what does?

It turns out, Jesus was right when he told us not to worry about tomorrow, or to worry about what we will wear or what we will eat, etc. but to seek first the Kingdom of God and focus our energy on serving others, making people around us happier and being thankful [or content] with what we have today.

That's exactly what all the studies show, anyway.

Wealth and fame do not pull happiness in their wake. Actually, it's being content and serving others that tends to pull success and happiness behind them.

Today at lunch several of my co-workers also began to share more about the blog I wrote about happiness and we also affirmed this principle of being thankful and how it connects to being happy.

Then, as I was leaving lunch to go back to work, I saw an email from one of our dear sisters in our house church family. She wasn't able to join us the other day for our conversation about what makes us happy, but she had read about it on our house church page online and sent us all this note:

"Hi Fam!

Missed y'all a lot yesterday but was blessed to hear how the conversation went over lunch. It's rad how God puts similar things on the hearts of his people... in my prayers, the word "gratitude" has kept coming up and I felt the Lord nudging me to take it more seriously and put it into a concrete discipline.

Basically all I'm doing is recording something I'm thankful for every hour. It may seem silly and at times the thing I write down are kinda silly but it's actually become something that I look forward to every new hour and a really good reminder of God's relentless love and provision. 

Here's yesterday's list: 

5am- a place to call home

6am-family to drink coffee with

7am- transportation through the sky

8am- best friends

9am- unique personalities 

10am- the privilege of worshipping

11am- languages of all kinds

12pm- the opportunity to travel 

1pm- deep relationships 

2pm- rain!!

3pm- food on the table

4pm- protection from the weather

5pm- a job where I can love people

6pm- chocolate covered items 

7pm- good and Godly mentors 

8pm- human diversity

9pm- good tunes 

10pm- time to rest 

If any of you wanna join me in this, I think it'd be fun to do together. "

How awesome is that? Imagine being thankful every single hour of the day!

Isn't that what we should be doing as followers of Jesus anyway?

Just to close the loop, I forwarded that same email to one of my co-workers as an example of how this practice of being thankful and being happy was being practiced by people in our house church.

His response was this: "That's pretty cool. Did you hear the quote that says, 'If you ever meet God and the only thing you ever said to Him was 'Thank you', that would be enough'?"

I thanked him for sharing that quote and told him that I agreed. "What more is there to say?"

Isn't that cool?

My challenge to you is: Could you do this for a week? Just make a list of what you're thankful for every waking hour for the rest of this week and see how that changes your attitude and affects your level of happiness.

If you decide to do this, please share the results here in the comments section. I'd love to know how it goes!

Blessings,

Keith

GIVE THANKS

At this time of year when we're all encouraged to stop and make a list of all that we're thankful for, I'd like to suggest we ask ourselves, "Who is thankful for me?"

As great as it is to cultivate our gratitude for all the blessings we've received from God and others, I think it's also very important to do our part to be a blessing so that others might stop and be thankful to God for our acts of kindness and compassion.

The way we live our lives matters to God, and it matters to others. This is why Jesus says that the two greatest commands are to love God and to love others as we love ourselves. In fact, he says that these two commands are alike. That means that loving God and loving others are related actions. 

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen,cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister." (1 John 4:20-21)

So, our mission is to be a blessing, not to be blessed. Our calling is to behave as ambassadors of God's love to everyone we meet, so that they might glorify God and develop a strong desire to know Him more and to love as we do.

The only way this will work is if we practice being a blessing to others every day of our lives, not just one day a year. It's also something we're expected to do even if we don't appear to be getting the intended results. Even if our kindness and compassion aren't reciprocated, we're still expected to continue in love, because that's what our Lord would do. 

For those who hate us, we're still expected to love them, and serve them, and to pray for them. Of course, that's where it really starts to get difficult, but we continue to love in spite of opposition because we know something that they don't know: Love has the power to heal and transform. How do we know this? Because we have been transformed by God's love. We have been healed by His love. And we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that perfect love casts out fear, and love never fails. 

This Thanksgiving, my prayer is that, by the grace of God, I will be a person who loves others and serves others, because my Lord did this for me, and because I was made to love and serve others. Because I've experienced the transforming power of God's love first hand, and honestly, I really want to see it happen again to as many people as possible before I see Him face to face.

Happy Thanksgiving. Now go and be the kind of person that others would be thankful for.

-kg

FRED ROGERS: ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Just in case you needed to see this for yourself...

And This Is How It's Done

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood won four Emmy awards, and Rogers received one for lifetime achievement.

During the 1997 Daytime Emmys, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Rogers. The following is an excerpt from Esquire's coverage of the gala, written by Tom Junod:

"Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence."

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, "I'll watch the time." There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly "May God be with you," to all his vanquished children."

Someday I hope to live in this man's neighborhood. For now I'm happy just to drive through and admire the architecture.

May all of us live such simple and humble lives as this man did.

Peace,
Keith