Thanks for the Little Things...Again

Ephesians 5:20 and Philippians 4:10-13

I have a set routine in the morning. I stumble out of bed, wake Anna and Andrew up and then go downstairs to make coffee, breakfast and lunches. I accomplish this running on autopilot until the coffee kicks in. Sometime after the synapses started firing at 6am a thought occurred to me while preparing Peter's bottle. I opened the freezer and pulled out an icepack and noticed that if dropped it was solid enough to damage the stoutest toes. I paused and decided it was time to thank the Lord our freezer worked.

A couple of years ago we awoke to a room temperature fridge. That was not a happy time. We took all the perishables out, put them in boxes and carried them over to the Hotpoint fridge in the church youth building. We now have a different fridge at home.

I wrote previously about giving thanks in everything and the difficulty of accomplishing this merits further attention. Here is my thought. This thought comes from observing that there are people that can allow a single negative circumstance to unplug their ability to be thankful. I believe gratefulness vs. ungratefulness is measured in a balance scale. It stands to reason that we will find ungrateful people lacking the ability to see small blessings. So, if we want to be people who are characterized by gratitude we can be well on our way by being conscious of the little things--like hard icepacks. The ungrateful person who begins to see little things as a blessing will see the balance start to tip in the direction of an overall attitude shift.