Gratitude

The message of church today was gratitude. Of course, I've been thinking about this for some time now, but it was a great meeting. One speaker mentioned having a gratitude journal and also having gratitude prayers where nothing is asked for, just praying for thanks and pausing after each thing. I'm not so good at the Journal thing. At times, I'm better than other times. I've done a prayer of gratitude and that has been an amazing thing. I would suggest it to anyone. I'm going to try to post one thing I'm grateful for each day on my blog. We'll see how it goes.

It's so hard to know where to start, since I am grateful for so many things. Today, I am grateful for music. I sang in the choir today for Sacrament Mtg. at church. We sang "For the Beauty of the Earth". It was so beautiful! I didn't play the piano or organ today in church, but I'm grateful for that talent. It truly has been a blessing in my life. I enjoyed singing today.

I do the music for Primary, too, at church (which is for the children). We were playing name that tune and tic tac toe with songs they already know. We threw in a couple of Christmas songs. I was going over the words of one of the songs and the last line says "And the Christ that baby fair". One child yelled out, "baby bear?" We all just had to laugh. I'm grateful to work with the children at church and to be able to sing with them.

I'm also grateful for Christmas music at this time of year! It lifts my heart and brings joy to my soul!

I'm grateful for much more than this, but this is my one thing for today - music!

I do have to leave with one story that a sister shared in her talk today about Gratitude. I'm still laughing about it. This sister mentioned that she had been watching a tv preacher one Sunday morning and he told of this story. Now this is very much paraphrased, so don't quote me on it, and the preacher is very well known, I guess, but I wasn't familiar with his name. Here it goes:

There was an older lady that lived on the outskirts of town and only had one grumpy man as a neighbor. He didn't believe in God. One day, she was praying out loud thanking the Lord for all her blessings. The grumpy old neighbor heard and listened from behind the trees. Another day, he went to the store and bought her some groceries and put them on her doorstep. She once again prayed aloud and thanked God for the groceries that were on her doorstep. The old, grumpy man jumped from behind the trees and said, "Ha! It wasn't God that gave you those groceries. It was me! There is no God!" She continued her prayer out loud and said, "Thank you, God, for the groceries and for making the devil pay for them."

I hope this story made you laugh as it did me. Think about your blessings. I'm sure as you start thinking, you'll think of more and more things that you are grateful for, as I have.