As I listened to Paster Joe’s sermon last night, I found myself a little struck — “soul punched” as Josh Schiel would say. Lately, I’ve been so frazzled and feeling worn down by events happening around me beyond my control, that I haven’t taken the time to thank God for all He’s given me. It’s easy to get wrapped up, and focused on what’s going wrong and forget everything that’s going right.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve been putting God on the back burner more and more. I have no excuse for it. I have plenty of time to give God, but seem to spend it on myself. Seems to always be the way, especially when I’m stressed. I tend to retreat into my video games. They seem to allow me vent out my frustrations, or give me a task to focus on and let me cool down. The trouble is that, when I turn them off, I’m back to thinking about everything that frustrates me and I’m no better off than when I started.

Pastor Joe had us do an exercise last night that I may try to do on a weekly basis — take a moment to sit and write down all the things I thank God for. There were quite a few. Despite being in the shop right now, I even thank God for my car. The exercise reminded me of something G.K. Chesterson said, “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

How differrent my life would be if I were to live that way. I imagine in the least, it would go a long way towards delaying a heart attack from chronic high blood pressure.