How Can We Give Thanks Enough?

“…Brothers and sisters, during all our distress and persecution we have been encouraged about you through your faith. For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?”
—1 Thessalonians 3:7-9

In a bookstore last week, inspired by Martin Copenhaver's devotional on the ucc.org web site, I was looking over a new book by John Kralik, entitled 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life. The premise is simple enough: during a discouraging period in his life John decided he would spend an entire year writing and sending at least one thank-you note a day. At first he wrote to family members and close friends, but later on in the year (somewhere past Day 100) he had to expand his list to folks he had met casually. So one day he wrote a thank you note to the barista who served him a coffee at Starbucks: a young man who had particularly kind and enthusiastic at a time of day when most people would rather still be in bed. The barista almost didn’t read the note: he expected it to be a letter of complaint. But he was delighted to receive the note and the writing of it made a difference in at least two lives, and perhaps in many more.

Simple acts of kindness can often do so much good for our attitude, our relationships, the practice of our faith and the reorientation of our lives from quiet desperation to, as Martin Luther King, Jr. suggested, “the daybreak of joy.” I have decided to practice this discipline during 2011.

I would be interested to know what actions you have chosen for a personal discipline or a new faithful practice that is aiding you in staying focused on your life goals and keeping the faith. Please send your ideas by postal mail to me at P O Box 301, Trenton, MO 64683. Email may go to PaulSFraser@hotmail.com. Facebook users can find me at: www.facebook.com/PaulSFraser. At any time, you may call my Trenton direct phone line: 660-654-2736.

Or, you can find me on Sunday mornings at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Trenton, Missouri, where I look forward to greeting you at the church door or in other places where we share ministry together!

Grace and Peace! Paul