Bloom where you are planted. Be Here Now. Stop and smell the roses.Learning gratitude in the moment and upon reflection Gratitude affects the way we look at time:past, present, and future. Often we collect grudges from the past, but gratitude pushes us to see a series of gifts and blessings.Instead of seeing the future as going downhill, we look forward to a brighter future, where God’s is working toward the goal of more and greater blessing, not death and destruction.
Also, I extended the reading to include the great passage on the future. So many of our fellow Christians rub their hands in glee at the thought of God raining down vengeance on those with whom they disagree or discredit. Here instead, the God who is seen by the people as punishing them through the exile is now offering a vision of a brighter future. Not only are they to work and pray for the welfare of their new albeit temporary home, but God continues to have their welfare at heart.we hear that the generous god continues to work, and we can be grateful for the future as a gift, not dread.
I think Luke makes sure that we know that the one person who thanks Jesus is a Samaritan. Jesus seems to assume that they are orthodox jews who would go to the proper procedures to place the seal on their healing. the last person one would imagine thanking Jesus may do so because he does not need to follow the precise rules. On the other hand, the proper procedures serve as a deterrent from the other nine thanking Jesus. In other words, the sheer fact of being the chosen people may move them to think that they deserve a healing, deserve their unanswered prayers to finally come to pass, no longer seemingly wasted. Many of us harbor the hope that if we live a good life, god owes us benefits.
It’s been on my mind how our visions of the future have grown stark instead of hopeful. I hold with Benjamin Franklin and Ronald Reagan that a picture of the usn on the horizon is a rising sun, not a setting one.I do think we can hold the words of Jeremiah close in our time as well as the depths of trouble facing the tiny kingdom of Judah. I have plans for you a future and a hope, for your welfare and not for harm. Session was looking into the present and future on budgets and see a noticeable gap. In part our offerings are built toward not only the maintenance of this congregation but a declaration about the future.
Gratitude is often a difficult virtue for us. We are so self-sufficient, self-reliant it is difficult for us to see how we live in a network of social relations, and it is particularly difficult for us to absorb that Scripture says the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. It is hard for us to connect with worship with glad and generous hearts, but certainly easier generous hearts than generous wallets.So we could move toward gratitude as a postiive virtue for us that leads to increased happiness. a social psychology experiments demonstrated that people who delivered a gratitude letter to someone who touched their life showed higher levels of well-being after a month. People who keep gratitude journals show a variety of indicators of happiness to a greater extent than control groups.Gratitude helps immunize us against the assumption that we earn all good things and that people usually cause us grief and trouble. It tends to orient us to present benefits instead of romanticizing the past or mooning about the future. It seems to make us more resistant to stresses in life.
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