Gratitude #25
Sunday, November 25, 2007
I had to teach today at church. I teach the 12 & 13 year old girls (its called Young Women's and this particular age group is referred to as the Beehives... don't ask me why, cause I don't know), and it seems that I always get more out of the lessons than the girls do. I mean, I am sure that the girls get stuff out of the lessons (at least I hope so), but it just seems that the lessons I have to teach are just what Heavenly Father needs ME to hear at that particular time. The lesson this week was on Optimism... when I told Thing 1 what our lesson was on, she said "Well mom. This is just for you, cause you have been a major grump lately!"
Jeeze.
Thanks.
But, she was right. I have been. This lesson was interesting because it just sort of came together for me... I was going to share all the tacky stories in the lesson, but then I got to wondering some things. First, I did a thesaurus check just to see how many synonyms there are for the words Cheerful and happy. Over 40. Then I started looking up scriptures with the word references of cheerful and happy and the various synonyms... it was so interesting to me. Cheerful/cheerfulness had 24, happy/happiness had 48, Attitude had 5, glad/gladness 161, Joy 235, Delight 74, Pleasure 81, Enjoyment 22, Good Cheer 13, Content 85, Peace 366, Hope/Hopefulness 140, Rejoice/rejoicing 283, Comfort 131, and Encourage/ment 9.
(Are you even still reading this?)
Add all those reference numbers up and it comes to 1,685 references to being happy/cheerful or something similar. That really made me think. I know that I didn't even make a dent in all the synonyms there are for those words, and yet with just what I found there were 1,685 references to being optimistic. It must be important to The Lord for us to be happy and to CHOOSE to be happy for him to reference it that many times. Now, that was just the verses in the scriptures that reference that... not the actual amount of times the words were used...
(are you still with me?)
It was profound for me to realize that PEACE had been referenced in 366 verses in the scriptures. I told the girls that if they chose to be happy their end result would be PEACE. You can't feel peace when you are grumpy and sad. You can only feel PEACE when you choose to be happy. I really had to think on that for a while. I realized that God already knows how I/we will behave or act when things are going well for us. But, what he wants to understand or know is how we will act or behave when things aren't going just the way WE want them to. How will we choose to feel/act? That is the REAL test! I realized that I probably wasn't passing the test very well, because I have been such a grump... but its like I told the girls. It's all up to us how we choose to behave, or see our lives. We can sit around asking ourselves "Why me?" or we can ask ourselves "Why not me?" and then further "What can I learn from this to make me better?" I challenged the girls to change their attitudes and start asking themselves the 2nd questions.
Choose to be happy, cause it was important enough to The Lord for him to reference it 1,685 times in the scriptures.
So, today I am thankful for these little moments that God gives me to show me how I can be better.
Jeeze.
Thanks.
But, she was right. I have been. This lesson was interesting because it just sort of came together for me... I was going to share all the tacky stories in the lesson, but then I got to wondering some things. First, I did a thesaurus check just to see how many synonyms there are for the words Cheerful and happy. Over 40. Then I started looking up scriptures with the word references of cheerful and happy and the various synonyms... it was so interesting to me. Cheerful/cheerfulness had 24, happy/happiness had 48, Attitude had 5, glad/gladness 161, Joy 235, Delight 74, Pleasure 81, Enjoyment 22, Good Cheer 13, Content 85, Peace 366, Hope/Hopefulness 140, Rejoice/rejoicing 283, Comfort 131, and Encourage/ment 9.
(Are you even still reading this?)
Add all those reference numbers up and it comes to 1,685 references to being happy/cheerful or something similar. That really made me think. I know that I didn't even make a dent in all the synonyms there are for those words, and yet with just what I found there were 1,685 references to being optimistic. It must be important to The Lord for us to be happy and to CHOOSE to be happy for him to reference it that many times. Now, that was just the verses in the scriptures that reference that... not the actual amount of times the words were used...
(are you still with me?)
It was profound for me to realize that PEACE had been referenced in 366 verses in the scriptures. I told the girls that if they chose to be happy their end result would be PEACE. You can't feel peace when you are grumpy and sad. You can only feel PEACE when you choose to be happy. I really had to think on that for a while. I realized that God already knows how I/we will behave or act when things are going well for us. But, what he wants to understand or know is how we will act or behave when things aren't going just the way WE want them to. How will we choose to feel/act? That is the REAL test! I realized that I probably wasn't passing the test very well, because I have been such a grump... but its like I told the girls. It's all up to us how we choose to behave, or see our lives. We can sit around asking ourselves "Why me?" or we can ask ourselves "Why not me?" and then further "What can I learn from this to make me better?" I challenged the girls to change their attitudes and start asking themselves the 2nd questions.
Choose to be happy, cause it was important enough to The Lord for him to reference it 1,685 times in the scriptures.
So, today I am thankful for these little moments that God gives me to show me how I can be better.
