Echoes of a "Gratitude Journal"

Several posts ago I vowed to return to the practice of using my "Gratitude Journal" to pull myself out of negativity-land. That lasted all of about 2-3 days. The sadness of the season descended and I really forgot to be grateful for anything. I started looking at all of the images I have stored and was trying to choose which one to use for my next posting. The beauty of creation overwhelmed me. I decided to take a quick moment and find three things to be grateful for:

FAITH: The sun always rises - a promise to us. The world revolves and every morning we know one thing, the sun will be coming up in the east. At certain times of the year it may be hidden by inclement weather, but we know, by faith, that it is there. That is faith - we trust in what we cannot see.

HOPE: Emily Dickinson called it the "thing with feathers that perches in the soul..." People that survived the holocaust did so by keeping hope in their souls. Read Elie Wiesel's book, "Night," sometime. Perhaps the most famous usage of the word "hope" is used in "The Divine Comedy," as Dante enters the Gate of Hell: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." When hope is gone, the human soul perishes.

LOVE: "The greatest of these is love..." Can any one of us attest to any emotion more powerful than love? LOVE your neighbor as yourself. For this a man will lay down his life for a friend, a mother will surrender her life for her children, a saviour will become a man and die a miserable death to save mankind. And how many of us will reject this gift? LOVE. Agape. Amen.

For these three things, I am truly grateful.