Two posts ago i wrote about A TAG – the Attitude of Thankfulness, Appreciation and Gratitude.
I’ve been thinking on it some since then – i believe it is one of the MAJOR keys to a life lived in Christ. It is what helps ‘build’ our Spirit in Him, in us. It assists the Holy Spirit ‘reside’ and stay ‘healthy’ inside of our earthly bodies.
Some ‘brief’ thoughts:
Be Thank FULL – let this attitude FILL your heart and your mind – flow throughout every fibre of your being so that it ‘infects’ every ‘negativity’ that we retain inside of us. Make effort to always keep Thanks with and in us.
We are to be Thanks-Giving; we should always Give thanks TO Him and to Others just like us. It is something we should always carry inside of us – but we should never restrict it to only exist within – it is to be Given – to Him Primarily, but to all and thus back through to Him through all.
Appreciate everything. We can enjoy some things and can dislike some things and be indifferent, apathetic to many things – this is human, but it is far from Divine. Just because we do not enjoy something does not mean we are incapable of appreciating it for what it truly is – or even just for what we perceive it as being (which very rarely are the same thing). I can appreciate the power and the fury and the ‘necessity’ of something like a hurricane, a bushfire, a lightening strike or an earthquake. If i was actually in one i suspect this appreciation would be of a very different nature to if i am a mere distant observer but i believe we are to develop our appreciation of all things since God is (somewhere) IN all things. Appreciation thus brings me greater appreciation of Him. (and my ‘relation’ to Him).
We DO NOT show appreciation when we ‘hide’ our thoughts or memories of a thing or event and try to keep it far from us. By thus hiding we prevent the giving of Thanks or of feelings of forgiveness – both critical to our ‘healthy’ relationship with God.
Gratitude. An interesting concept.
Relates to Thankfulness; Grace; Pleasure; and also can imply a certain ‘obligation’ on the recipient. An appreciation of kindness or benefits received form another by the participant. Gratitude can also imply a Debt owed under contract to someOne.
Grace and gratitude both come from a common Latin root in the English language
Found under a definition of Grace: (Theology).
a. the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.
b. the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.
c. a virtue or excellence of divine origin: the Christian graces.
d. Also called state of grace. the condition of being in God’s favor or one of the elect.
“A grateful mind By owing, owes not, but still pays. –(John) Milton.”
Your thoughts??
BLob's Blog 
1) “Be Thank FULL – let this attitude FILL your heart and your mind – flow throughout every fibre of your being so that it ‘infects’ every ‘negativity’ that we retain inside of us.”
I think this perfectly sums up my approach to living, which of course I don’t always succed in doing.
Because I don’t believe in life after death, I want to spend as much of it as I can feeling good. As much time as I can with joy, as little time as possible with feeling bad.
Every day that I wake up I am grateful to be alive. Some days I do feel pain, there is no way to avoid it. When I do I will admit I am not so gratetful. 🙂 However the only time I will feel nothing is when I am dead, so even the feeling of pain proves I am alive.
I must acknowledge the negative but also work as hard as I can to refocus my energy on the postive, and sometimes this does take a lot of work.
2) “We are to be Thanks-Giving; we should always Give thanks TO Him and to Others just like us.”
My thankfulness, appreciation and gratitude are directed at my fellow humans, and the miracle of human life and awareness. Being able to experience this miracle is more than enough for me.
3) “We DO NOT show appreciation when we ‘hide’ our thoughts or memories of a thing or event and try to keep it far from us.”
Trying to hide memories of unpleasent events does not work for me. The harder I try to forget the more I remember, the worse I feel.
4) “Gratitude can also imply a Debt owed under contract to someOne.”
When someone helps me, sometimes by just being willing to share their time with me, I do feel grateful.
Since I don’t see life as coming from anything other than nature, which is a process, I don’t feel I owe a debt for just being alive. Any debts I do owe are to my fellow humans who have helped me.
5) Grace
Any contempaltion of theological grace has never helped my to better appreciate life. I consider the time I spent praying to be waste of time. It never made me feel better, mostly made me feel rejected. I never gained any inspiration from either praying or the studying the Bible.
Meditation, clearing my mind of all thoughts, as much as possible, does give me a feeling of bliss(?). It’s a good step to reducing stress, to stop feeling that negative energy. It can sharpen my focus, help me think more clearly.
I place nothing above human life. I also accept that we humans are just one of many species that experience this miracle of life. As I said this is more than enough for me.
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ED – like i said before, and this seems to reinforce in many ways…. we are much closer in how we think than we are different. 🙂
A couple of points you may wish to ponder – or meditate on if you do that kind of meditation (which some Christians would know as ‘prayer’ – but which many probably would not) 😉
Considering your ‘debt’ of gratitude to only being to the human race…
would you consider that all the animals that have died so that you can enjoy eating their body are owed any gratitude by you? Similarly any of the millions of plants?
How about for your clothing you wear? your house you live in? have they not also been produced not only by human labour but also at the cost of a large proportion of Nature?
Do you consider you owe the American Indian’s a debt? or the Pilgrim founding fathers?
If we look around at ALL that is – we can gain a better appreciation of all that goes into making ‘our’ life – and very little of it is actually down to just humans.
Of course, there are a great number of humans who don’t feel that way at all and think it’s all about ‘us’/me.
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I agree that nature HAS a process – but i would not suggest nature in it’s entirity can be written ‘down’ to just a process. Life is far more intangible than that and none of us knows for sure where it derives from or how it ‘works’ in that process.
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I can understand the Grace/rejection bit.
I believe many have their ‘expectations’ placed way too high ( and sometimes also way too low) by the ideas we are presented with in childhood about prayer.
But there are many things we fail to properly understand in childhood that we later on begin to understand more – it can often be a matter of ‘timing’. It may never be too late – unless we decide for ourselves that it is and continue to tie our focus to accordingly. If we don’t change our expectations from those in childhood we are not very likely to change our ‘results’.
What we truly believe plays a very large part in what we achieve. 🙂
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Hey you! 😉
You will be happy with what I did tonight! Even though it was just rambling. 😆
Love you!
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