Sometimes focusing on God’s “big miracles”—like curing cancer and making brain tumors disappear—causes us to overlook His small, daily miracles of providence in which He holds the universe together, keeps our hearts beating, provides us with air to breathe and lungs to breathe it, and gives us food to eat and stomachs to digest it. (Years ago when I became an insulin-dependent diabetic, it dawned on me that I had never once, in the fifteen years I’d known him, thanked God for a pancreas that had worked perfectly until then!)
If we disregard these and thousands of other “ordinary” gifts, we don’t just fail to notice them, we fail to notice God. God’s goodness is always evident if we look in the right place. “He is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28).
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?”
When life is viewed with a spirit of thankfulness, we will see the happiness and reasons for happiness that surround us. So this Christmas, let’s open our eyes to the multitude of daily gifts that God has already given us. We have much to be thankful for!
This great little video made by Forest Hill Church in Charlotte, NC illustrates that point wonderfully.
For more on gratitude and the happiness it brings us, see Randy’s books Happiness and 60 Days of Happiness.
