Thinking Thankful

A friend and I are working through Kelly Minter's study Nehemiah, and the last couple of weeks have spoken to me.

Yesterday I read in Deuteronomy...

"When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.  Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day."

Deuteronomy 8:10 - 11

God is bringing us through a season of stepping out in faith.  And we're learning that taking that first step is hard, but the steps that follow are also very hard.  Not bad or full of regrets, just hard.  Many days I struggle to find hope and joy when it's hard.

All of this has been on my mind and Nehemiah has encouraged me to stop and reflect on how far we've come already, and praise God for that.  We've found a soft place to call home for now.  We're making friends.  We aren't the new people at church any more.  Our little family of 5 has grown closer.

Nehemiah has shown me that we need a gratitude adjustment.  We need to stop and praise God for what he has done in our journey.  We need to remember that the Lord is bringing us through this journey...even the hard stuff.

And then yesterday Jeannette posted about their plans for Lent.  And even though we aren't doing the random acts of kindness thing, I did identify with the blog she mentioned that is doing the gratitude thing.

The Hairdryer family is giving up ingratitude for Lent.

They don't know it yet, but tonight at dinner they will.  Every evening, each of us will use a sticky note to write something we are thankful for, a praise to God, or remember a way the Lord our God has worked in our life this year.  And then we're going to stick the note on our windows so we'll see them throughout the Lent season.

We did a version of this a few summers ago.  Remember this?



So very easy, such enormous results.

Is your family celebrating Lent?