Who Was Thankful For You This Year?
Is Thanksgiving a day of the year, a state of mind, a way of life or the start of the retail shopping season? Did you give thanks yesterday for only those blessings you have been given lately or do you give thanks for them all year around? When you give thanks, do you thank the Lord for putting someone else in your life that had a significant impact in your life? Have you made any significant impact in anyone else’s life? Do you think you were on someone’s list of what they were thankful for this past year?
There are many things we all should be thankful for. Consider if you were born in another part of the world? Say Europe, Africa, South America or Asia? What if you were born at a different point in time? Say 1655 AM1 (Anno Mundi “year of the world” or 2349 BC “Before Christ”; approximately one year before the flood), 32 AD (when Jesus Christ was 32 years old, 1492 AD (Christopher Columbus finds the new world) or 1929 AD (the start of the USA Great Depression).
You were born to live at this point of time in your current location of the world for a reason. What that reason is, only you can decide. What you do or don’t do with your time while here, only you can determine. If you are living your life and doing things with a focus to only improve your current situation, then you may need to broaden your scope of thinking and step into a lifestyle that includes doing things for others in need and next year you may be on a few more thankfulness lists.
When giving thanks for your blessings or when helping others to improve their situation in life, consider these LifeLongU™ Life Categories:
Career – What can you give thanks for in your career and how can you help another’s career blossom?
Financial – Are you being a good steward with what the Lord has blessed you with? Have you given thanks for those blessings? Are you giving some back to Him? Are you being a Good Samaritan and helping others in need?
Spiritual – Have you given thanks for being born into a Christian country and that you have the right and ability to worship and praise God openly and share his word with others? Are you thankful for being able to freely study His word, the Bible? How are you doing with your studies?
Relationships – We are all in many types of relationships; have you given thanks for having those relationships? Are your managing them properly? Are you thankful for those that went before you which helped to pave the road for you to get to where you are today?
Leisure – Freedom to use our time as we see fit with either work or play is a large blessing we should never take for granted. Have you given thanks for it? Are you using your time wisely? Get out and enjoy the world you live in and be thankful for it.
Philanthropy – Have you given thanks for your ability to give to others of your time, money or things? Have others thanked you for your being there when they needed you? It is rewarding to help others and nice to hear from others that you were able to help them. In all things, give thanks, which is also giving.
We all have challenges in our everyday lives and may feel that they are too much for us to bear. But many of these challenges can be viewed as opportunities by others to help you. By allowing others to help you, you also help them. In the upcoming years of my life, I look forward to helping others with some of their challenges and allowing myself to be helped by others. By this mutual giving and receiving of help we can both be thankful.
We can do so much more with the blessings the Lord has giving us if we only think outside of our box. Just to remind us what “our box” is…it’s the way we see our surroundings, the way we think about things and the way we act or take action in the world in which we live. It’s a big big place and if we step out of our comfort zone, our box, we can certainly do more in years to come that others will be thankful for too. I believe it is our responsibility to see our box for what it is, a grouping of self-imposed walls we put around ourselves that keep us feeling safe in our environment. To reach our true potential we need to step out of that box and help those that we currently share the world with and they may add you to their list of things to be thankful for next year.
Why not set a goal for Thanksgiving Day, 2015 to be on at least one or more lists that others are giving thanks for.
Gary Kiecker
We appreciate your comments and welcome any thoughts or questions regarding this blog or on future topics.