Gateways to Joy

Today when getting my coffee it was given to me in the hallmark red cup that has become signature for Starbucks during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holidays. " Wow.  November is here already?"  I thought. Once again the holiday season is among us. Christmas is on my mind.  Thanksgiving is on my mind. I began to dwell on what I've been reading all week. "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.  Give thanks to Him, bless His name," "I've been disillusioned." I seem to think that more money is what my family needs; they think it too. It is true we do need more money, but as I think about what I've been reading this week, I know that what we need first and foremost is gratitude. I read that  gratitude makes what you have enough. So my question to myself and to you,  "Is more money the solution for you?" "Or do you just need a heart of gratitude?" Honestly, I ha...

Living gratitude is one of the things I find that I am most inconsistent with.   I start.  I stop.  My eyes or better yet my heart always seems to shift it's focus.  I've been touched by the weight that a life lived out in gratitude can lift, but I always seem to forget. So I will attempt again.  I will try today to remember that a life lived with consistent gratitude is a happy life.  It is a life that will keep me closes to God and it will be the most fulfilling for me. Friends from Ann's I ask that you bestow on my grace as I've stopped giving thanks for a while and have found that it has brought me a sense of emptiness. I'm looking to be filled and refueled again and I have come to experience that the only way that is possible is for me to give thanks for this moment because even if I don't see it, there are plenty of things to count as joy.  One being the grace to begin again. What I am thankful for: 1. ...

This weekend, on a rainy Saturday morning, I'm thanking God over here. Thanking Him for allowing me to right my wrongs ... again and again. Thanking Him that I can get on my knees and come to here right here from the quietness of my room. Thanking Him for the Bible that is available, but at times taken for granted by me. xo, Angela blog subscription  | twitter | facebook

Today is Thanksgiving here in the states. As I sit in my room listening to the happy voices of my children and my mother go back and forth in conversation and laughter, I'm reminded to be "thankful" for the "so-called" small things. But aren't those small things, really the big and most important thing. Things like family and generations . . . things like love and sharing in our expression of love to each other. Thankful that each one of us and those who we love are here another year, able to partake in the breaking of bread and fellowship. . . . And thankful for the love and memories of those who blessed us with their presence, but have gone on.  The ones who helped in shaping us. As much as I am thankful for those I love and those who love me, I am most thankful for God's love, mercy and His unfathomable grace. Had it not been for God bestowing the above attributes on me daily, I would for sure have perished. So today, I just wa...

I give thanks throughout the day, count gifts.  Though I don't count them by writing them down as often as I'd liked.  I count nonetheless.  Pay close attention. I give thanks and count gifts and fear disappears.  Tension is gone.  I'm awake to my surroundings—my life. I know and believe that I am loved with an everlasting love, of this I am assured. He loves me.  He tells me through the little ... the daily activities, the ones I often take for granted, how much He cares.  Ugly times come.  Ugly times are here.  Yet, I fret not. For I know He is working it out.  This is part of His plan.  He's got the whole world in His hands.  My problems are no problem for Him.   My truth:  God will be with me.  God is for me. It's the absence of the thing that startles:  I feel no fear. . . There is no choking angst.  I am not anxious and I breathe easy and that worry child I've clung to, she deserts. I...

I wake up with it all on my mind: the interruptions.   For years now it seems, I've had one interruption after another with the end results being the same: nothing.  Appearing only to be a waste of time. "What have they been good for?" I lie in bed scanning the mind for answers.  All that has really come out of it is what I've already known.  I have layers of sin-sickness and my instability only peels the layers away exposing the truth.   Smokescreens.   The crux of it all boils down to a lack of trust...I'm sensing.  But why do I lack trust?  Do I feel I know better than the all-knowing God how to run my life?   Doesn't my actions speak louder than what I say, so the answer to that question would be yes.  His actions spoke loud too, and revealed His heart toward me: us.  The Bible tells us that God so loved the World that He gave His Son ...   God proved that He loved me by '...