Let Christmas reset your hope, belief and gratitude levels

         

     It’s Christmas again. Another year has come and gone and for some nothing changed and for some everything changed; things got worse. If you are one of those people who lost so much of your basic living needs there is no way the rest of us can truly understand the backlash of our falling economy.

          I guess what is on my mind this morning is hope, belief and gratitude. There seems to be an explosion of it around this time of year. Maybe there is something in the snow if you live in the snow states or just in the rain in other places. But wherever it comes from, it seems to permeate people’s lives for a few days.

          I’d like to think about gratitude for a minute.  How thankful are we for the things that we still have that others lost or never had?  The phrase, “I’d give my eye teeth” to have this or that shows my age. It’s an older expression.  There is a great deal in our world today that most people would give their eye teeth just to have a small portion of.

          When I worked there were days I hated getting up and going.  Something that always ran through my mind at times like that was how I’d feel if I walked into my work place and was called into the main office and they fired me.  The threat of losing things makes looking at what you have a whole lot better. I told myself that I’d be dancing all the way to work that morning if I had been out of a job. That even less pay was better than no pay at all and that there was someone who would trade places with me in a heartbeat.  I was right to think that way.

          I am sure you have seen the Christmas movies where you see a shivering individual standing outside looking through a snowy window at all the festive celebrating of the fortunate folks inside all warm and happy around a crackling fire. What would people standing outside of your life see today? What would they give their eye teeth to change to be in your shoes? It makes me stop and think whenever I am tempted to complain. I don’t think gratitude is settling for less, but a positive expression of appreciation.

Living in such a materialistic world I wonder if we aren’t losing the truth of statements like, “at least you have your health”, or “at least you have a job”, or “your children are all safe and well”, and so many more. Pick just one and think it through for a minute.  See if something inside doesn’t begin to change.

Belief, is such a simple word and yet so difficult to do at times. Have you ever believed for something that never happened? Or hasn’t happened yet? What of the things in our lives that sailed on that boat that is never coming back? Where you turn and walk away knowing it’s over? We have all had something in our lives that fits that description.  No one is exempt.

But the thing I think about is what the other option is if I stop believing? You kill all possibilities then. Let’s say you get stranded on an island. Days go by and no one comes looking. And the more time that goes by the less chance of it happening gets greater. But you are alive and still have needs. You realize that you have around you natural elements to recreate shelter, food, even fire. So you get busy and pretty soon you have a lifestyle equivalent to the best the island can offer.

Everybody has to be somewhere, right? So on the island is where you now find yourself. Every day you believe you’ll be rescued, but every day comes and goes; no boat. Years go by. You ate, you swam, you learned to appreciate nature, and you had shelter from the sun, rain, even a storm or two. Then one day you realize that your life on the island is coming to an end.  You think about the night you were tossed around in the angry sea, nearly drowning, fighting franticly to crawl onto the beach and now all the days in between.

If you look back at all the days you believed you’d be rescued and wasn’t you have to look at what your option would have been. What if you had stopped believing? When we stop in the roads of our lives and think about turning back we all have to ask ourselves, “back to what?”

We know what is behind us; it’s what might still be ahead that we will always wonder about. Even if the boat doesn’t come, isn’t looking for it every day better than not?

Christmas should reset our hope, belief and gratitude levels. I lost my childlike hope at an early age. It took me years to get it back.  My dear mother used to say, “don’t get your hopes up.” I understood many years later why she said that. She wanted to protect me from being disappointed.  We had a conversation about it one day after she became a Christian and she realized then that Hope and Belief is the very thing that does need to be built upon each and every day of our lives. It is what keeps us going.

In all of your giving this Christmas, find places to restore hope, believe with someone, and let your expressions of gratitude be explosive.