In his latest book, Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have, Iowa author James A. Autry reminds us that gratitude is a choice, a spiritual—not social—process. Made evident as behavior, gratitude is not the behavior itself. We may automatically respond, “Thank you” or “Appreciate it” in the daily course of our lives. These are polite, conditioned responses, but they are not gratitude.
Instead, gratitude is a way of life, a belief system, that means cultivating a spirit of thankfulness even through the negatives of life. It is remembering there will always be more reasons for gratitude than for despair.
In a society consumed by fears of not having “enough”—money, possessions, security, and so on—Autry suggests that if we cultivate gratitude as a way of being, we may not change the world and its ills, but we can change our response to the world. If we fill our lives with moments of gratitude, we will indeed love the life we have.
In a society consumed by fears of not having “enough”—money, possessions, security, and so on—Autry suggests that if we cultivate gratitude as a way of being, we may not change the world and its ills, but we can change our response to the world. If we fill our lives with moments of gratitude, we will indeed love the life we have.
The title Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have caught my attention. In this book, I was reminded that I have a choice to either be positive or negative about the life I have been given. Sure, there are many things I would change if it were in my power to do so: No one in the world would be hungry, churches and families would not struggle with finances, all children would be healthy and whole. The list could go on and on.
At Susan Oxenford’s funeral I read scripture from Romans 5:
…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
I chose Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have for my Book Club to read this month. I chose it because it was a message I needed to hear myself. It was a message I needed to incorporate into my life. It was a message to remind me of how blessed we are to have God’s love poured into us.
How could we be anything but grateful?
Learning to Love the Life I Have,
Candice
No comments:
Post a Comment