Gratitude is about process

Item 19 I am grateful for. A ball I found at the park.

SIMPLE things can also seem elusive. Gratitude is a good example of this enigma.

We never seek to be more grateful when we’re grateful — we engage in such a pursuit when we lack gratitude. And the trouble is we can be thwarted at the start of the process and become disillusioned well before we reap some of the fruit of the gratitude we’re sowing.

In sowing in gratitude, we reap in well-being, which is fully expressed in joy.

But how are we to just be grateful? Again, we come to the place where we crave gratitude because we know that that is what is missing. We crave what we don’t have. And we don’t really know the way to acquire it.

Here is what I have found.

Gratitude works in the minutia. It works when our mindset is open and observant enough to see the many things that we ought to be grateful for. As we work into the nodules of time’s moment in the crevices of our senses we see things we don’t normally see. God opens the eyes of our hearts.

Gratitude is a habit, and more than that; it’s a habit that initiates and supports other good and godly habits. The reason we find gratitude hard to sustain is we don’t engage in the process of change long enough. We enjoy the fruit of gratitude and then rest on our laurels. But even in a sustained campaign, our passion for gratitude wanes. It must become a lifetime commitment; something we keep coming back to, one day at a time. It must become a chief virtue with humility and compassion.

As a process, gratitude grows in accordance with our journey into it. As God multiplies blessings, gratitude grows like a tree the more we feed it and light we give it.

Gratitude is a journey into seeing the everyday wonders of life God cannot show us unless we seek them.