Treasures to be Thankful For

God is faithful. – 1 Corinthians 1:9

Have you ever sorted through a drawer or cleaned out a closet and found something that immediately flooded your heart with emotions long past? 

This week, I opened my friend Alice’s edited copy of the first 3 O’Clock Wake Up Call Bible Study. Her handwritten suggestions caught me off guard, causing tears to cloud my vision.  

Two winters ago, Alice sat in my Bible Study, putting her journalism skills to work by secretly editing the pages before her.  Like a professor improving her student’s work, she drew arrows, crossed out redundancies, changed verb tenses, rewrote paragraphs, and even left exclamation marks of encouragement when I’d “hit the mark”.  

I had no idea how much those secret arrows and edits would bless me now, once I finally mustered up the courage to read them. Alice left my first large-group Bible Study, lovingly edited, with a post-it note addressed to me on her writing desk.  It is a priceless treasure today because Alice is still encouraging me from heaven.  

Have things happened in your life that make you question God’s timing or wisdom?  

As I held Alice’s edits in my hands this week, I asked God WHY her life ended before our work on earth was completed? I told Him that if I was in charge, Alice would have lived as long as her mother, who passed away last week at age 94. 

But God is faithful.  He gently reminded me that I’m not in charge and nudged my heart and mind, like He so often does, to give thanks instead of complaining.

It is in the moments of thanksgiving that we see more clearly.  

My husband is now my editor.  This working relationship knits us together as we laugh and joke about his “grades” of my blog posts.  He simplifies my sentences, moves texts around, and sometimes, like Alice, makes changes in secret. I get to make fun of him for errors of punctuation and grammar he occasionally makes when he’s edited after working an overnight shift.  It’s a priceless partnership that we both treasure. 

Instead of complaining about things that didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped, we can instead be thankful that God is always faithful.  

He who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it. (Philippians 1:6)

The Power of Giving God Thanks Will Ignite Your Faith and Change Your World!

Thank You for Being a Part of the 3 O’Clock Wake Up Movement