Thankfulness . : . THE Reason

So it's taken me a month to come full circle since my last post. It's been a struggle to let God work in me. Yet today I had a breakthrough.

I've been convicted the last several weeks that my focus is off. I realized I didn't know Jesus. I know OF Him, but I've let my friendship with Him completely slide. And today, I got a greater glimpse of Him. Pray that it lasts!

Have you ever considered what it would have been like for Jesus to be born? Here's the Creator of all things, giving up an audience of angels, for a painful, bloody birth. Imagine all of those first experiences at birth. His first pain, His first chill, His first yell. The one that stuns me is His first smell.

Jesus was born in a barn, laid in a feeding trough. The King of Heaven volunteered to save our world, and his very first introduction to the earth...was the smell of animal feces. No parent on earth today would wish such a birth situation as that...but God chose it and it humbles me.

"The heart of the human father yearns over his son..he trembles at the thought life's peril. He longs to shield his dear one from Satan's power, to hold him back from temptation and conflict. Yet...yet...To meet a bitterer conflict and a more fearful risk, God gave his only begotten Son , so that the path of life may be made clear for OUR little ones".
~ Desire of Ages, p 48-9

I'm not a father, but I am a brother to a beautiful, wonderful sister. And I know what it means to pray and fear for her well-being in a world that's bent on the abuse of women in all forms. So when I consider what it meant for God to send His most precious child, to send Him to "meet life's peril in common with every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss" (DA, 49)....I don't really know how to deal with that. The risk was huge, Christ could have failed, but the reward was worth the risk.

After reading this, I asked God for a simple principle that I could apply to remember this.
And the answer came quietly, but quickly - "Be thankful and receive".

So thank whomever deserves your thanks today, it's all you can do to repay them.