For granted or with gratitude?

     Blessed peace and quiet.  Ahh.  After five wonderful, but hectic, days of having everyone home, I suddenly and shockingly find myself alone for a few minutes.  Moses sits at my feet and looks slightly stunned.  He's even a bit restless as if to ask, "Exactly what happened here?  Where is everybody?"  But then he happily settles back into his semi-permanent position of resting and relaxing--he's not troubled for too long about much of anything.  Why does my dog have to keep teaching me lessons on how to live?
     So sure, the house is a wreck, and there's lots of laundry and cleaning and chores I could, and probably should, be doing right now.  But instead, I think I'll just sit down for a moment, reflect, and choose wonder and gratitude over busyness and getting things done.  I'm learning that worship and thankfulness to God trumps accomplishments any day... and always enables us to get everything done anyway--only now with a joyful heart.  It's just so true: "Reverence for God adds hours to each day." (Prov.10:27)  
     Thank You Lord for having all our children home for Thanksgiving.  We take nothing for granted anymore, so what a gift to have them here. G.K.Chesterton (one of my very favorite writers) declared: "When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."  How much we take for granted when all, and I mean all, should be taken with gratitude as gifts from the hand of our extravagant God.   So thank You, Lord, for the mess and the noise and the missing sweaters (they seem to float off with our girls) and the dishes and the runs to the grocery store and even for the failures and mishaps.  Thank You for the blessings and the challenges.
      Sometimes I look at my parenting and all I can think of are all the ways I have fallen so far short as a mom... but then I look at my children and all I can see is grace. His grace that covers my myriad shortcomings and washes us all with His love and forgiveness. I'll never be a great mom... but He will forever be a great God.  And for that we say "Thank You our Faithful Father. Teach us to love like You.  May our homes be places filled with gratitude and grace."
     More grace, more gratitude.  And more G.K.Chesterton: "You say grace before meals.  All right.  But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."  
     That's the ticket: continually thanking God for all and in all.  His grace.  His grace in children.  His grace in chores.  His grace in the little and His grace in the big.  His grace in the successes and in the failures... trusting He can bring good out of anything and everything.
     So today, will you thank Him for that which you too often take for granted?  Will you thank Him in the busyness and the noise, but also in the silence and the rest?  What have you taken for granted this week, this day?  Well, then, food for gratitude!  Say grace before all, since His grace trumps all.  Might we take nothing for granted but take all with gratitude.  To the God of all grace and all good, be all the glory.