Thankful Thursday

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is only about two weeks away?  That kind of makes me nervous!  I started doing Thankful Thursday posts a couple of years ago as part of anticipating Thanksgiving.  I saw the idea somewhere on other blogs and wanted to write down what I was thankful for.  Then I thought it would be a good thing to do every week to build my “gratitude attitude.”  I did that for another year or so.  And this year I decided I did not need to do it every week, just whenever.  But that kind of made me lazy.  I am sorry about that now,because I think it changed my focus some.  I know it is good to see in my circumstances, the good and the bad, a way to “give thanks in all things.”  I decided I needed to discipline myself and do this again.

Discipline.  Ugh!  That word does not give me a lot of encouragement.  It sounds like work and unpleasantness to me.  But all week long it has been in my mind to say that I am thankful for discipline.  It is necessary.  Just as I got lazy in my Thankful Thursday posts, I have become lazy in a lot of things.  I have been thinking on the verse that says, “Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully in the grace that is to be brought to to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  I Peter 1:13.  I love the picture of maybe fisherman Peter setting out to get some work done.  Perhaps on his boat or flinging out his nets.  But has a lot of robes hanging around his legs to make it difficult.  He has to hoist them up and tie them in some way so that the work could get done.  I have a lot of “loose robes” hanging, bad habits, wrong attitudes, pure laziness, that keeps me from changing.  I am not even confessing here deep spiritual issues…just day to day stuff that needs to happen in order to live “in order”.  For instance, yes, I’m going to say it, my weight.  Then there is the housework that I thought should go away with the kids and in downsizing to an apartment.  How about exercise?  I could wait until January and squeeze it into a New Year’s resolution that will never be kept.  But my body needs it now. 

I have lazy disciplines in my spiritual life as well.  Snoozing in the morning until it is too late to have time with my Lord.  Prayer on the run.  Staying up late on Saturday nights and being really tired on the Lord’s Day. 

So, I return to the cure,discipline. It is in the choosing to do differently, to choose to do better, that I am girding up my loins!  And hey, maybe I’ll loose a little of those loins in the process!  Today I am thankful for discipline!