So. Much.

There are sometimes moments in which the successes of those around us amplify the voice of poverty in our ears. The voice that says, "You do not have enough. These other people are set for success and fortune and you will never have what they have." There is a race all around me, stirring up my heart and pulling me in with it to chase a life free of struggle. This race is real, but it is a race I am not obligated to run. When I step back, I think, "I never set out for success and fortune. Those are not the things I am pursuing." True, in some ways I don't have all that I could want. I've experienced struggle and need. But when I remember that I am actually heading in the opposite direction toward a different prize, I am filled with so much thanksgiving*:

I am thankful Rachel has a broken heart for people in need and that she acts on it every day by working towards finding adopting parents for orphaned children.

I am thankful for the way my twin brother loves God, his wife and his son. I am thankful for the way
God has used our relationship to shape me.

I am thankful for my family and my best friends in California who shower me with faithful love through phone calls, letters, and prayers.

I am thankful for the neighborhood in which we live, how it is so rich with needs ready to be met in love. We pray that we can be love in our neighborhood.

I am thankful for creation, the way God's voice of adventure, love, and beauty calls me in. I can't help but respond in awe and amazement.

I am thankful for the church and the way that God is moving through His people; how Rachel and I get to participate in that movement. So exciting!

I am thankful that our God is love and that His kingdom of love is breaking through the darkness and overcoming the world.

I am thankful for scripture and the saints of the past and present who through their words provide a story in which I belong.

I am thankful for a wife who daily sharpens me to be more like Jesus: inviting, loving, accepting, hoping, responding to the Holy Spirit.

I am thankful for resurrection, the miracle of death turning to life and the hope that one beautiful day I will finish the race. I will see Jesus. I will fall at his feet and eat at his table forever.



*I almost wrote "thanksgiving for what we've been given," and then listed all the things I have for which I am thankful. But this would be to avoid the voice of poverty by substituting it with the voice of relative wealth, that is, to be thankful for the possessions that I do have rather than the ones I do not have. But this is still a focus on possessions, and anyone who did not have those possessions would look at such list and begin to hear the voice of poverty toward them. So none of that. Instead I am thankful not for what I have, but for who God is and what He has done in creation and in people.