If for even a moment I would pull myself away from this mad search for everything that I don't have to take a look at everything that I do have, this mad search would instantly devolve into a calm peace. And if there’s one thing I don’t have that has driven this mad search, you can bet that this is probably it.

I am most thankful for what I don’t have, for had my life’s wish list been filled in the manner I had chosen I would be steeped in meaningless trinkets verses bathed in God’s treasures.

It is my hope that despite the gravity of the trials, we will never forget that the privilege to live life always offsets the difficulties involved in the living of it. This is the essence of thanksgiving.

To be thankful for one thing is infinitely more powerful than to be bitter about a hundred others.

There is an invincible fortress that greed, gluttony and all of the other self-centered forces relentlessly assail with great force. Yet this unassailable fortress is such that the torrent may advance against it in a manner both vile and formidable, but the mad rage of this crazed maelstrom born of greed will helplessly fall to an exhausted calm before it ever touches its walls. And it is the simple attitude of thankfulness that builds a massive fortress such as this.

As subtle as it appears, being thankful is in fact an utterly invincible attitude that has enough muscle to handily uproot the most negative attitudes that we can conjure up. And I would think that we would be thankful that we can actually have that much power working against all our negativity.

By far, the most precious gifts are those that I have, for without those I will never be able to obtain those that I don’t.

It’s not the world that enslaves me. Rather, it’s my attitude about the world as positioned against the rather faltering belief that I can change it. And when that belief is firmly rooted in a relentless thankfulness that I have both the privilege and the gifting to do exactly that, I can know that I will never be a slave to my attitude, which is one of the greatest acts of liberation that I will ever experience.

If I had a single wish, I would wish sixty seconds of total depravity upon myself. For one of the greatest gifts of all is to have ‘nothing’ so that I can finally learn how to appreciate ‘everything’.