Enjoying What You Have

Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite.
This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.(Ecclesiastes 6:9)

Enjoying what you currently have is better than letting your heart wander. You should make use of what is in front of you instead of wandering around full of desires. This is what the dog in Aesop’s writings did when it chased after the reflection in the water and lost the meat it had in its mouth. You should use what God has placed before you and be satisfied with it. You shouldn’t try to satisfy your own desires, because they will never be satisfied. Instead, you should use whatever God has placed in front of you. All of it is very good (Genesis 1:31).

Excerpt From: “Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional” by Martin Luther. 

Gratitude and Grief

It’s a funny thing about grief: healing starts at the very point where we begin to need it; that is, at the beginning of losing the person we love. When we begin to grieve, we begin to heal – even if we don’t want to heal because it seems self-centered and callous.

Speaking from my own experience, we can’t even start to heal if we are doing our best to feel nothing at all or nothing positive at all. Perhaps we tell ourselves that our loss is not so terrible since it is God’s will. Or we try to convince ourselves of our happiness for the one who died because of her vast suffering. In that case, our grieving would actually appear selfish. …

If gratitude ushers in healing, how do we come by it? The gift of gratitude, while wonderful, is exactly that – a gift. None of us can will it into being or perform exercises to make it happen. It is a gift of God, pure grace. …

At times it is harder to long for gratitude than at others. During these times of drought in the heart, we can still make an effort: We can try our best to long to be able to long for it, to long to long, as we hope for hope when hope is hard. “Ask, and you will receive” was spoken for us. It applies right here.

Roberta C. Bondi

From pages 102-103 of Wild Things: Poems of Grief and Love, Loss and Gratitude by Roberta C. Bondi. Copyright © 2014 by Roberta C. Bondi. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Upper Room Books. http://bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this book.