I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest.

Having ‘nothing’ is a great gift because there is a great good to be learned in poverty, and part of that lesson is that the bounty of material wealth might be the biggest ‘nothing’ that there is.

If I continually focus on what I don’t have, my life will always be completely empty despite the fact that it’s completely full.

I find it ingenious that God stepped into this world in the lowest of all places so that He can relate to poorest of all people. And while our wealth might smugly chide us into believing that we are not those people, the rancid impoverishment of our souls would tell us that we are exactly those people. And when we understand that, Christmas makes sense and we are no longer poor.

If I scan the expanse of my heart and find it empty of everything except emptiness, it is because I ‘poured’ the whole of my passion into something other than God. And anything other than God will always be too ‘poor’ to be able to ‘pour’ back anything that can fill that kind of emptiness.

I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets.

Being thankful is cherishing the fact that I have the privilege of ‘having’ in a world where the majority of my fellow human beings know nothing other than the struggle of surviving.

The most impoverished people of all are those who have everything but appreciate nothing.