Emerald’s Gem Box…

What if you woke up today, with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?

Too many times, I feel, we are caught up in what we don’t have in life, and miss so much of what we do have. So many times we find ourselves thinking of all the materialistic things we think we need to be happy, and we seem to forget all the things that are truly the most important.
In order to be happy in life, we don’t NEED big houses, new cars, big screen televisions, and all the new electronic gadgets. What we NEED is inner-peace. This can only be obtained by truly being happy with (and within) ourselves and our surroundings.
I read a short story once about an elementary teacher giving her students an assignment on writing down what they thought the Seven Wonders of the World were. The answers varied, from child to child, but included such famous sights as ... the Grand Canyon, Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, Egypt’s Great Pyramids, Panama Canal and St. Peter’s Basilica.
One little girl was having great difficulty in writing her paper, and when asked by the teacher what the problem was, she explained there were just too many things to choose from. So the teacher asked her to read her paper aloud so that the other students could help her. Her list of “The Seven Wonders of the World” read: “To see, To hear, To touch, To feel, To laugh and To love.”
How often we all seem to lose sight of this. Life is not about what we have, it is about who we are.
The things we overlook as simple and ordinary, and that we take for granted, are truly the most wondrous things in our lives.
The most precious things in life cannot be built by hand or bought by man.
At the end of the day, when we go HOME, and EAT dinner, and sit on FURNITURE, in the HEAT or A/C, talk with our SPOUSE, and play with our CHILDREN – those are some of the things that we seem to overlook on a daily basis.
So many people in this world do not have those luxuries. Why can’t we thank God more often for what we do have, instead of blaming Him (or others) for what we don’t have?
What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?
Life is short – make it good.