Gratitude Adjustment

This Sunday, we kick off our Stewardship Season. Our Stewardship Committee has been working hard, reading some great work, exploring some creative ways of expressing our needs, and prayerfully taking steps toward this kickoff. In the coming weeks, my weekly reflection will be replaced by guest posts from our parishioners, reflecting on how they hope to flourish in faith this Stewardship Season.

The more and more we have prepared for this time, the more and more I have been pondering the practice of gratitude. I have been thinking about how dominated my prayer is by intercessions and how few thanksgivings I have been offering to God. I have noticed how grudgingly I write that hefty pledge payment each month – praying that we can still make our other bills instead of thanking God for the gifts with which we have been blessed. I have been listening to my responses to that age-old question, “How are you?” and been a bit disappointed about how consistently I manage to fit in some complaint about my life. As I run from one thing to the next, I have found myself more burdened by life than rejoicing in life as a gift.

So I have decided to use Stewardship Season as a mini-Lenten experience. As we encourage parishioners to prayerfully consider their financial giving, I will be prayerfully implementing gratitude back into my life. I am committing myself to infusing gratitude into my relationship with God, my relationships with others, and my relationship with myself. I figure that if I can focus on that work, the conversation I have with my family about our financial pledge might just take on a different tenor. I am also excited to see what other surprises God has in store for my mini-Lenten Stewardship experience. I am looking forward to the journey, and hope you will consider yourself duly invited to join me.