David said to Abigail, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak.” Then David accepted from her hand what she had brought him and said, “Go home in peace. I have heard your words and granted your request.” I Samuel 25:32-35
This week, we have been exploring the spiritual practice of Gratitude. You may have already practiced it in a few ways, and we hope that it has blessed you. Having what my mom called “an attitude of gratitude” isn’t easy all the time. Our brains are wired to perceive and manage challenges and threats. We are problem-solving creatures. That serves us well in many cases, but if you spend more emotional and mental energy solving problems in your life, what do you think you will remember most? I hope you can sense the rhetorical question there, but I’ll answer it anyway: we remember our problems, not those things that are easy.
Practicing gratitude is meant to help us lock the joyful things of life into our memories. It helps us develop the muscles of joy, hope, and satisfaction. The sad reality is that many of us have more joy in our lives than we remember, because our struggles are too much in the foreground.
In the passage above, David is grateful to Abigail for preventing him from committing evil. He was about to kill her husband because he felt disrespected. He was about to be a fool and she stopped him with grace and poise. He could have been defensive, but he humbled himself and thanked her instead. Her husband later dies because of his own evil, and David ends up taking Abigail as his wife.
Today, I want to suggest an expression of gratitude that greatly increases your memory of something good in your life. The bonus is that it will also increase the joy of another person. Write a thank you card, text someone, or make a phone call to someone you are thankful for. Be thoughtful about why you are grateful for them. The power of this is that it takes something you are grateful for and elevates it in your memory. It may cause a conversation with that person. All these things can only serve to move a joyful thing in your life to the forefront of your thoughts. The beauty is, you might brighten someone else’s day at the same time.
by Aaron Bjorklund
