Thursday, November 27, 2008

Gratitude

So I read on Andy's blog this quote by Henri Nouwen as quoted in Brennan Manning's Ruthless Trust.
To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives--the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections--that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.

I read it on Monday when he posted it and I've been mulling it over in my mind ever since. I'm sure I'm not there yet (will I ever get there?), but it's something to strive for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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