Significant Gratitude

February 9, 2018

It’s not complicated, but it can be difficult. Every night I stare at my iPad screen, my mind scrolling back through the day, remembering people and occasions, some significant, others not so, about which I can give thanks. There’s no shortage of subjects, but finding one that might interest anyone else can be a challenge. 

Plenty of wood to keep the stove stoked, a house that my wife has turned into a home, strength and health to enjoy them, vehicles that get us where we need to go, family and friends...the more I reflect, the more I find that fuels my gratitude. When I started writing four years ago, I gave my musings the title “RefrigeratorWordArt” for a web blog. Most parents and grandparents have refrigerators festooned with pictures of or by their kids or grandkids. They are galleries of love and significance that a visitor may notice, if only in passing. But to those who live there, the refrigerator is their own Louvre filled with treasures of immense value. 

Maybe it’s not so important if what I write is significant to anyone else if it somehow inspires someone to give their own thanks for things great and small. Lord knows, there is enough subject matter for complaint lying all around on the surface of life, but the gems of gratitude often have to be mined. And like rubies and diamonds, they are beautiful for their rarity and for the intentionality required to bring them to the surface and place them in mountings that display their glory for all to see.