As I write this, I am so aware of all the chaos in the world around us, wars, rumors of wars, grief, sorrow, and sickness. However, alongside those things is blessings. Rick warren talks about the fact that our lives are always on 2 tracks – battles and blessings. Today I want to focus on the blessings because I believe that’s what gets us through the battles, I know for me that has proved to be true.
My story starts about 8 years ago when I happened to be reading The bible in a year and thinking about the response of the Israelites of grumbling and complaining about their circumstances. I began to wonder if I would do the same thing if I had been stuck in the desert with not much to look forward to. I decided that I probably would be and was in danger of doing so as there was a lot going wrong in the country, and the temptation was to join in with all the complaining around me. I then went to a function where the guest speaker talked about the Power of thankfulness and the seed took root in my heart. I carried on with my bible reading for the next few weeks and came across these verses:
“It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night,”
Psalms 92:1-2 NIVUK
I was captivated by them and decided to pray about it and ask the Lord to prove them to me. I wanted to be able to proclaim his love in the morning and faithfulness at night. I decided that day that I would start a blessing journal and write 5 things that I was grateful for that night. They could be small but in true Nozi fashion, they had to be different each night! I don’t know why I do this to myself.
That was the start of my thankfulness journey, and I haven’t looked back. I still try to write 5 things I am thankful for each day and as I have gone on, I have found that those promises in those verses have been so true for me, more so on my worst days. I seem to have a lot to write about. I like looking back at the end of the year and seeing what God has done. It increases my expectancy for the year to come.
I have sometimes wondered whether it could be toxic positivity (also in true Nozi fashion who likes to process and analyze things to death), but I realized that God has given me a gift of being able to see the good even when my heart is breaking. He shows me the treasures in the darkness.
There are days even in the last few months and years that I have thought I will have nothing to write about at the end of the day, but I always have something. I am learning more and more to hold those two tracks of life in tension. I lament but I also rejoice in God’s love and faithfulness. As much as it has become a practice, I feel there is a supernatural element. I guess this is an example of God partnering with us.
My encouragement is to start with the practice and God will do the rest. Just one thing you are thankful for each day. It becomes easier to see his work as the years go on.
In the last few years, I have started adding a characteristic of God that I have seen that day and that has also made my journey with him richer. My prayer for you is that one day you can see his love and his faithfulness no matter what you are going through.