Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Perhaps you didn’t want to get up at all … with all the stress going on in your life right now. It may have seemed much more appealing to just bury yourself underneath the covers and hide from the world … forever. Then, whether you liked it or not, your bladder had other plans … and you were forced to face the day … ready or not. Having taken care of business, you start wandering around the house with a million thoughts in your head … all of them vying for attention … all at the same time. Realizing it would be best to at least try to focus on one thing at a time, you remember some flowers you had seen just beginning to come up on the other side of the house … so you go to look to see what progress had been made. It was then that you saw how the buds had developed into beautiful yellow tulips. It was then that your spirits were lifted … and it was then that you realized you had a choice. You could choose to be thankful. You could choose to be grateful … and, in so doing, you could choose to appreciate the fact that you, in reality, really were blessed (and not just by the appearance of flowers). That one, seemingly inconsequential act of choosing to look for the good in the development of flowers became the start – became the inspiration you needed – to choose to look for the good in other areas of your life. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t take much effort to see all the obviously bad things all around us in our lives. To actually see the good takes effort … to see the good takes practice … to see the good takes an intentional choice on our part to actually look for it … to actually search for it … even when it may appear (on the surface) to be nowhere around. Philippians 4:8,9 The Message (MSG) tells us, “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.” So, the timeless truth for today is to LOOK. Look for the good. Look for the beautiful. Look for every opportunity (even in the small things) to see and comprehend all the ways God shows his love towards you … and that (in and of itself) will yield the positive results of you actually becoming genuinely thankful, grateful, and blessed.
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