12 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Colossians 1:12)
A few years ago, I remember
reading a short news blurb in USA Today about a Mr. Otha Anders, of
Ruston, Louisiana, who spent 45 years bending down and collecting something
most of us ignore—pennies. In October of
2015, the 73-year-old Anders—a supervisor for in-school suspended children–took
all the pennies he had collected to his local bank. They filled 15 five-gallon
jugs and contained a grand total of $5,136.14. The bank’s coin machines took
five hours to count all those pennies! But what’s truly moving about this story
isn’t Anders’ thriftiness; it’s his thankfulness. Each new penny on the ground served as a
prompt to give thanks to God. Anders
told reporters: “I became convinced that spotting a lost or dropped penny was
an additional God-given incentive reminding me to always be thankful. There
have been days where I failed to pray and more often than not, a lost or
dropped penny would show up to remind me.”[1]
Wow! When was the last time you were thankful for a penny? That story points out something that can get lost in the never-ending desire for more and more, namely that thanksgiving is a matter of the heart that begins by acknowledging the small blessings from God that may go unnoticed. How different would our state of mind be if we looked for blessings throughout our day the way Mr. Anders scoured for pennies? Those tiny gifts of grace are there if we have eyes to see them, and they will be easier to spot if our souls are trained towards thankfulness.
Max Lucado offers this insight, “The grateful heart is like a magnet sweeping over the day, collecting reasons for gratitude. A zillion diamonds sparkle against the velvet of your sky every night. Thank you, God. A miracle of muscles enables your eyes to read these words and your brain to process them. Thank you, God. Your lungs inhale and exhale eleven thousand liters of air every day. Your heart will beat about three billion times in your lifetime. Your brain is a veritable electric generator of power. Thank you, God. For the jam on our toast and the milk on our cereal. For the blanket that calms us and the joke that delights us and the warm sun that reminds us of God’s love. For the thousands of planes that did not crash today. Thank you, God.”[2]
I think he’s on to something. Being grateful for little things cultivates gratitude in all things. God isn’t just in the monumental moments. God’s goodness is also in the 1,001 “pennies” of blessings He’s dropped all around us. They are there waiting for us to discover, collect and count. How about the sight of calloused hands raised in a church service, the giggle of a happy toddler, the intoxicating smell of freshly brewed coffee, the wagging doggy tail or the purring kitten, sunshine on your back, a song or sermon that cuts straight into your soul. If we fail to notice these blessings, then we fail to notice God’s doting Father tendencies in our lives.
G.K. Chesterton summed it
up, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that
gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”[3]
Amen. -DM
[1]
Frededreia Willis, “Man Cashes in Pennies He’s Been Saving for 45 Years,” USA
Today, 28 October 2015 <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/28/man-cashes-pennies-hes-been-saving-45-years/74727160/>
[2] Max
Lucado, “An Attitude of Gratitude,” 8 October 2013
<http://www.faithgateway.com/attitude-gratitude/#.VkIN5PmrSM8>
[3] G.K.
Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, vol. 20 (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001), 463.
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