A Thankful Heart is a Happy Heart

The Veggie Tales sang about it… and it is true.

Our memory verse this month has been Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.”

Where is your treasure? Where is your mind’s eye? What has your heart?

What thing or event or problem or worry or person or approval do you keep coming back to over and over?  What do you think of when you wake up and as you go to sleep?

We’ve already started watching our favorite holiday movies. If you’ve seen A Christmas Story you know, Ralphie wants, “an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle!” But would you say Ralphie was happy – of course not!  In all his longing and scheming and obsessing- he was miserable.

You are probably not longing for an air-rifle…. Maybe not even a thing at all.  Maybe your heart is heavy with grief or your thoughts are drawn to concern over your children and their hearts and their futures… like mine…

Yes, God gave me these amazing humans to raise, but if I think about them – oh, the anxiety!  However, if I think about God, the sovereign, omniscient, omnipresent, creator king who loves me, died for me,  and provides for me- WOW!  It all melts away.  They are His!  I am His! You are His!

May you rest in His peace.  May you truly find contentment in His provision.  May you fall asleep counting your blessings.

Psalm 84[a]

For the director of music. According to gittith.[b] Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm.

1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
    Lord Almighty!

2 My soul yearns, even faints,
    for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
    for the living God.

3 Even the sparrow has found a home,
    and the swallow a nest for herself,
    where she may have her young—
a place near your altar,
    Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
    they are ever praising you.[c]

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
    whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

6 As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
    they make it a place of springs;
    the autumn rains also cover it with pools.[d]

7 They go from strength to strength,
    till each appears before God in Zion.

8 Hear my prayer, Lord God Almighty;
    listen to me, God of Jacob.

9 Look on our shield,[e] O God;
    look with favor on your anointed one.

10 Better is one day in your courts
    than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
    than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
    the Lord bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
    from those whose walk is blameless.

12 Lord Almighty,
blessed is the one who trusts in you.