Blessings in the Morning

July 3, 2015

Gratitude isn't always (or even often) something that can be conjured up on a moment's notice. In the two and a half years I've been exercising my gratitude muscles, I've noticed that it is imperative that I set my mind to it first thing in the morning. If I don't start out the day looking for blessings, I end up overlooking them, in part because many of God's best blessings come disguised as challenges and difficulties, or even hardships. It is natural to look for the obviously good things in life, but if our gaze ends there, we end up living a shallow, narcissistic life, seeing only those things which cause our immediate happiness. But it is often in the shadows that we find jewels reflected in the searchlight of our seeking.

I would not have chosen the trial we endured ten years ago when a third of our congregation and half our income took flight. One person's issues infected the core of our leadership and brought Park church to its knees, which actually is where we should have been all along. Believing as I do that God has purposes in even the most difficult trials, I thought to myself, "If this is God's preparation for something even more challenging, I think I'd just as soon pass." It turned out that instead, it became a learning experience that has humbled me and enabled me to help other pastors and congregations going through their own storms. More significantly to me personally, I learned that I wasn't as good at reading people as I had thought, and I discovered true friendship in those who stood by us, often at considerable personal sacrifice. You don't forget friendships like that.

Years before, another friend stood by us in a different and more personal storm. He was there in one of the darkest hours of my life. And when ten years ago, he got caught up in the inferno that blazed all around us, leaving the church and accusing me of causing him over the years all sorts of grief and pain, I wondered why he had never mentioned any of it to me, I mourned his leaving, but I am still forever grateful for how he stepped into my life years before when I desperately needed a friend. I'll never forget that, and will never speak evil of this person.

So today I woke to seek blessings. Waiting till evening to retrace my steps looking for the good isn't enough. Today was a day of clear and obvious blessing, with hardly a cloud passing overhead to cast its shadow on the landscape of my life. I am grateful for that, but also for those difficult times that have yielded their own hard blessings. Today wasn't one of them, for which I am thankful. But because I chose to look for the blessing this morning and will do so tomorrow, I hope to be better able to receive with gratitude that hard gift when it is given.