The Gifts of Gratitude
“Every good and perfect gift is from above.” (James 1:17)
How often do your eyes sparkle like your child’s?
The simplest things cast a glow on my children’s faces as we explore the world around us. There are frequent moments when they are stupefied with curiosity and wonder, as if their vision is cast in colors I can’t see. It’s a pity my senses are so dulled by the grown-up demands that vie for my attention, masquerading in importance and impairing my sight. I want to see as my children see.
If the pure in heart are those who see God, it’s no surprise the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children. I want to take a lesson from them in this month of Thanksgiving and learn to be mindful of the blessings all around me. Mindfulness always begins with intentional attention. This attention opens our senses to a deep language beneath the shallow surface of our daily lives, attuning us more keenly to God’s voice and heart. Deep calls to deep.
Cultivating mindfulness and gratitude alongside our children is a way of remembering that “every good and perfect gift is from above.” Lifting our minds to God in awareness of these gifts might take the form of simple prayers, contemplative meditation or gratitude journals. I know of a family that has a tradition of stopping at the sight of nature’s awe-inspiring gifts, hallowing these moments of the divine beauty, glimpsed within the confines of time and space, with an old hymn. They’re the first to admit it sounds a bit cheesy, but I think there’s something sacred and memorable about this small gesture of gratitude to God as, with their children, they stop in the midst of blazing autumn glens and sandy sunlit beaches, to sing:
“For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies;
For the One which from our birth
Over and around us lies;
Lord of all to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.”
In our family, we sharpen our senses to the blessings around us by creating a family “thankful tree” in the month of November. As we sit around the dinner table, hearts warmed and bellies full, we each write our blessings on colorful construction paper leaves and add them to our tree:
“Bonhoepper” (our pet bunny).
“Daddy’s crepes.”
“Bubble baths.”
“Neighbor friends.”
“Unicorns.”
As we gather the rust-colored paper leaves and paste them into a fiery collage, I find my soul filling up with gladness. It’s as if Technicolor vision infuses my beige adult world. I begin to bask in the abundance teeming all around us, and I get my sparkle back.
Wendy Connelly, mother of two, is a graduate student at St. Paul School of Theology, Leawood, and co-founder of the “Live & Let Think” dialogues on Christianity in downtown Kansas City.