{"id":20541,"date":"2019-11-25T17:47:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T01:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=20541"},"modified":"2019-11-25T17:48:09","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T01:48:09","slug":"sowing-seeds-of-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/sowing-seeds-of-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Sowing Seeds of Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY REV. PAUL GRAVES<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hardly a Thanksgiving season goes by without my remembering a special moment in Albany, OR many years ago.\u00a0My wife and I were enjoying our Grampa and Grandma time with our young family.\u00a0We attended a Saturday evening Spanish-speaking Mass with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the offering plate being passed, our son gave Katie and Claire some money they could put in as their gift.\u00a0As the plate came to 21-month-old Claire, she dropped her dollar bill in and said \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was stunned.\u00a0I\u2019d never heard anyone say \u201cthank you\u201d as the offering plate came drifting by.\u00a0\u00a0At her toddler age, Claire had few words that were yet recognizable.\u00a0But she said \u201cThank you\u201d a lot, and not always as a \u201ccorrect\u201d response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But don\u2019t dismiss Claire\u2019s wisdom! For while we might easily dismiss her toddler words, we dare not miss \u2014 at our peril \u2014 Claire\u2019s innocent attitude of gratitude that fuels her intuitive understanding of\u00a0how God intends life to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t mentally understand what she said in that situation.\u00a0But her grampa did.\u00a0Claire was the right teacher at a moment I needed to be taught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gratitude is not merely the recitation of thankful words said at the \u201cright\u201d time.\u00a0We may know those words but come up short on the attitude.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claire didn\u2019t have all the words, but she was learning what God intends for her to learn:\u00a0she is deeply loved as a child of God.\u00a0Now, at 19, she still easily says \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe all children are born with that God-knowledge in every fiber of their being. Claire, Andy, and Katie are fortunate to have parents who still reinforce her inner knowledge with outer acts of love, of acceptance, of disciplined direction.\u00a0Sadly, not all children are that fortunate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been that way for generations, hasn\u2019t it.\u00a0Some children\u2019s intuitive sense of gratitude is nourished, while other children\u2019s sense of gratitude is malnourished.\u00a0So then we reap generations of adults who either nourish or malnourish their children. And so it goes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something biblical about sowing seeds and then reaping what we sow.\u00a0Usually, it\u2019s a warning about sowing bad seeds, negative seeds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this a clarion call to sow good seeds in fertile ground.\u00a0Our children are the fertile ground, friends.\u00a0Our children and grandchildren know without words that their lives are precious gifts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re born with an innate sense of \u201cThank you.\u201d They come to us with that wisdom!\u00a0And they share their wisdom in the sneakiest ways if only we have the eyes to see, the ears to ears to hear, the hearts to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We adults are the seed bearers and scatterers \u2014 a great and wondrous responsibility for sure.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We exercise that responsibility most effectively when we find in every day a reason to say \u201cThank you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not a big thing, really.\u00a0But sometimes it means a major attitude adjustment when the day is going lousy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Thanksgiving holiday comes around in three days.\u00a0Try a simple experiment with me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day between now and including Thanksgiving Day, be very conscious of the little things for which you are thankful \u2014 in your home, at work, with friends, even with strangers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See each opportunity as an offering plate of sorts.\u00a0Even as you fill a dinner plate on Thanksgiving, even as you prepare to put onto the plate your own life-offering, stop to remember where your gift, your \u201cdaily bread\u201d, came from in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who knows?pi\u00a0Claire\u2019s habit just might be habit-forming for you too, as it\u2019s become for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The Rev. Paul Graves<\/strong> serves as the chair for the Council on Older Adult Ministries for the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Paul Graves believes that gratitude is a gift we are born with. In his latest post, he shares a personal example of this truth and a call to nurture and care for the gift as we find it in our children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":20542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sowing Seeds of Gratitude #UMC","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[142,113],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-older-adult-ministries","8":"category-opinioneditorial"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/thankful.jpg?fit=1200%2C627&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-5lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20543,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541\/revisions\/20543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}