Your eye is the lamp of your body.
When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light.
Luke 11:34
One story tells of a mother and son who lived in a forest. One day when they were out a tornado surprised them. The mother clung to a tree and tried to hold her son. But the swirling winds carried him into the sky. He was gone. The woman began to weep and pray: "Please, O Lord, bring back my boy! He's all I have. I'd do anything not to lose him. If you'll bring him back, I'll serve you all my days." Suddenly the boy toppled from the sky, right at her feet a bit mussed up, but safe and sound. His mother joyfully brushed him off. Then she stopped for a moment, looked to the sky, and said, "He had a hat, Lord."
This is the season for Thanksgiving, a time for which we are to be grateful for all the blessings that we have in our lives. Yet we realize that for some, being grateful does not come easy for various reasons. This has been a tough year. Yes, there are circumstances where it is difficult to be in a grateful spirit, a Thanksgiving mood. But how much of our feelings of gratitude are weighed down, tainted, colored, by our situation and how much of it is influenced by our attitude. That causes us to mistrust. To make us wonder why we are not getting what we deserve.
Our attitudes are like lenses of the mind that are always at work. Sometimes they shrink, sometimes they magnify, sometimes they color, sometimes they obscure. They’re always at work. “The eye is the lamp of the body”, Jesus says. It’s all about that word, “assumptions.” If your assumptions about life are bad, then your whole body will be filled with darkness, with emptiness, fear, negativity, mistrust that distort everything you see around you. That distorts our lives. If the eye is not sound, darkness will roll in.
Just look around you and there is a lot of evidence that this life is not a conspiracy to mistrust. It’s a creation to enjoy. It’s a continuation of the story of who God is, a God who is self-giving, pouring out His grace.
Looking at life through the eyes of gratitude. That will transform us to truly knowing that all of life is a gift to receive and truly rejoice. It is not insignificant that the first prayers we learned are prayers of thanks, “God is great, God is good let us thank Him for this food, for health and strength and daily food, we give you thanks O God. For this food, may it be blessed to our use and to your service. Amen.” May you have a blessed Thanksgiving.
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