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Posts Tagged blessings
I am the world’s most dangerous person in the kitchen. If something can be dropped, cracked, or knocked down, I will do it. No exceptions. That is why I am a big believer in Pyrex — the almost indestructible glassware made by Corning. Used in everything from cookware to the Hale Telescope, the glass is created through a melting process which requires exceptionally high temperatures over long periods of time. The end product is extremely durable, able to take extreme temperature swings and is virtually unbreakable.
While it’s a familiar concept in manufacturing, the idea of making something stronger by exposing it to extreme heat is also familiar in life. It’s like the old saying “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
We all have to face challenges – fires in life. The question is how to face those fires and come out stronger? Said another way, how do you forge a heart of Pyrex?
One quick and easy solution is found in the Genesis story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. There Jacob is attacked by a “man” (or more probably an angel or the divine in human form). Rather than giving up, Jacob holds on and does something audacious. He looks the figure in the face and says “I won’t let go until you give me a blessing!” The nerve! Yet what happens? God gives him that blessing: a new name “Israel” (translated: “God prevails”). Instead of letting this struggle defeat him, Jacob turns it into a blessing; something that made him stronger for the days ahead.
What do you wrestle with in your life? What fires or “high temperatures” do you face? What could you learn from that moment? What does it have to teach? What would happen if you took hold of that issue, looked it in the eye and said, “I won’t let go until you give me a blessing?”
Do you face a job loss? Perhaps you would receive a blessing of faith.
Are you facing a medical crisis? Maybe you would receive a blessing of courage.
Relationship problems? Perhaps you would receive a blessing of humility.
Even something as minor as waiting on a cross-town bus that is late — asking for a blessing might bring you a lesson in patience.
In the end, we’re all just trying to be better people; to strive to be more like our creator. And perhaps God is offering us a little help. It’s like C. S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.”
There’s an old myth in metalworking that says a silversmith knows when the metal is fully refined when he can see his reflection in it. Perhaps, God is doing the same; refining us through fire not only to make us stronger, but so that we reflect our creator’s image.
Consider the possibility that each hardship in life comes bearing a divine blessing. Ask for that blessing. Look for the lesson. Face the fires of life and come out stronger. Use them to forge yourself a heart like Pyrex glass.
Prayer to Live with Grace By: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May we discover through pain and torment,
the strength to live with grace and humor.May we discover through doubt and anguish,
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.May we discover through suffering and fear,
the strength to move toward healing.May it come to pass that we be restored to health and to vigor.
May Life grant us wellness of body, spirit, and mind.
And if this cannot be so, may we find in this transformation and passage moments of meaning, opportunities for love
and the deep and gracious calm that comes when we allow ourselves to
Way more than politics and religion, my family’s passionate holiday fights revolve around food. Specifically, the battle lines are drawn over whether marshmallows or brown sugar and pecans are the best topping for the always wondrous sweet potato casserole.
I, myself, am a brown sugar/pecan warrior, while other, lesser beings in my family, believe that white sticky goo should be used as a topping. And so, every year, there’s a stand-off. Eyes narrow, arms fold, and the fight begins.
When you think about it, the actual casserole conflict is pretty lame. Both toppings are sugary, both will put you into a diabetic coma with equal speed, and both—in the end—make a great casserole. Surely, somewhere in all this goodness, there has to be a happy medium. There’s too much yumminess here to waste on petty infighting.
Sadly, the infighting in our nation is much like my family’s sweet potato feud: tragically polarized. It’s like the San Andreas fault has jumped out of California and embedded itself in the hearts of the American people.
We’re right; they’re wrong. End of story.
Our national perspective is like a greeting card I saw recently that depicted two ladies from the 1950’s smoking cigarettes, one saying to the other, “All I know is one of us is right . . . And the other is you.”
That is American down to the ground.
What if we come at our conflicts in a different way? What if, instead of a direct marshmallow/brown sugar pecan throw down, we use the wisdom of St. Francis, who said, “Let me not seek as much. . . to be understood as to understand?”
Conflict resolution experts call this interest-based negotiation; meaning that you focus on why the issue is important to the other side, rather than the rightness or wrongness of your respective positions. By identifying shared values, you find common ground, and it is from that place of commonality that solutions more easily flow.
If I apply this to my family’s great marshmallow debate, I quickly see that our shared value is our delight in sweets. We’re just fighting over which ingredients can best lead us to that shared value.
Our political issues can be approached in the same way. In almost every conflict, there is common ground. For example, we all want a better world for our children, fair and equal treatment for our citizens, protection from terrorism, and clean air and water. We’re just fighting over how we get there.
Maybe this Thanksgiving holiday, we can consider a new recipe. For our wonderous sweet potato casserole, how about a sugary topping of all three ingredients: marshmallow, brown sugar AND pecans? Or half brown sugar/pecan and half marshmallow? Or how about we use neither and top the sweet potatoes with Cap’n Crunch?
So, too, let us consider a new recipe for this nation—our wondrous casserole of ethnicities, races, and religions. We need a fresh approach that focuses our commonalities and then finds a way to combine our needs, hopes, and dreams into a dish that feeds us all.
America has too much to offer, too many blessings, and too rich a history to be brought down by petty infighting. Partisan politics have no place in a nation where all are created equal. Let’s celebrate Thanksgiving this year by acknowledging our commonalities and giving thanks for what we share as a family of Americans. Surely, somewhere in all this goodness, there has to be a happy medium.
Thanksgiving is a time to pause, take a deep breath, count our blessings and express our gratitude.
We spend time with family, eat delicious food, kick off the Christmas holiday season, watch football and engage in any number of personal family traditions.
Perhaps this year, more than in others in recent memory, I am more cognizant of the need to give thanks. However, I think something we need to consider as we are leading the next generation of citizens, is that gratitude is not limited to a spoken “thank you” or a special day. Gratitude is a way of life – a continual living into an awareness of the blessings we have and the grace we are given each and every moment of the day.
Simply put, gratitude is a life of awe. It’s a place where we are very aware of the incredible life we are given, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. It’s more than an attitude or a platitude – it’s a state of being.
Often, our children miss out on awe. Their lives are fast-paced and hurried. They shuffle from one activity to the next, one distraction to the next, one practice to the next and that sense of awe and wonder gets lost in the noise. I fear that a constant lack of awe leads to a lack of gratitude and a growth of entitlement. When we aren’t aware of the greatness of our blessings, we assume that our blessings are our rights and we behave in ways that are more greedy than gracious, more demanding than grateful.
Here are three ways that we can help our kids learn to live a life of awe:
- We can stop.
For a moment, for a breath, we can stop. Stop the car. Stop the conversation. Stop the running. Stop for just a moment and look up, look out and look around.
My kids love to make fun of me because I will pull the car off on the side of the road to get a picture of the sky. They make fun of me, but they also look up a lot – at stars, at clouds, at sunrises and sunsets – and they are in awe of our Creator. And that leads to thanksgiving. So, let’s stop for a just a moment, when our kids are watching, and live into awe.
- We can go.
One thing that hinders gratitude is an introspective life that is focused inward on self.
A.W. Tozer once shared, “Gratitude is an offering precious in the sight of God, and it is one that the poorest of us can make and be not poorer but richer for having made it.”
Showing and offering gratitude leads us to look not to self, but to others. When we are aware of our blessings, we want to extend those blessings to those around us.
There is something amazingly precious about our children watching us serve others and joining us in that work. It leads to a distinct awareness of just how blessed we really are.
- We can speak.
My favorite hashtag on social media is #speaklife. It is used to share all manner of uplifting and powerful messages of life-giving hope. Gratitude isn’t just about saying, “thank you,” it’s about speaking life into situations where hopelessness and darkness encroach and try to steal, kill and destroy hearts and lives. It’s the antithesis of grumbling and complaining. Gratitude says there is hope, and if our children need to hear anything today, it’s that there is hope – unending, never-failing hope.
As we look around at the world around us and see the things that hurt our hearts and weigh heavy on our spirit, let’s cultivate a new approach within ourselves – an approach that stops, goes and speaks with heartfelt gratefulness and genuine thanksgiving, an approach that leads to a sense of awe and wonder. To do so is to follow the imperative found in Colossians 3:17. “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Christina Embree is wife to Pastor Luke, mom to three wonderful kids, and family minister at Nicholasville UMC. She is passionate about seeing churches partnering with families to encourage faith formation at home and equipping parents to disciple their kids in the faith. Currently studying Family, Youth and Children’s Ministry at Wesley Seminary, she also blogs at www.refocusministry.org and is a contributing blogger at D6 Family, Seedbed, and ChildrensMinistryBlog.com Follow her on Twitter at EmbreeChristina. This first appeared on her website, www.refocusministry.org and is used with her permission.
