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Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?
Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes. They will teach you valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you're tired and weary,
because it means you've made a difference.

It's easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who
are also thankful for the setbacks.
Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles,
and they can become your blessings.

If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. It seems there are those who desire to find the bad in people, far outweighs their need to seek the good. For those, I feel sorry for, as this does not fulfill life as it should be.

A high school teacher decided to honorall of her students by telling them the difference they each made. She called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First she told each of them how they had made a difference to her and the class.

Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters, which read, 'Who I Am Makes a Difference.'

Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a week.

One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his shirt.

Then he gave him two extra ribbons and said, 'We're doing a class project on recognition, and we'd like you to go out, find somebody to honor, give them a blue ribbon, then give them the extra blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a third person to keep this acknowledgment ceremony going. Then please report back to me and tell me what happened.'

Later that day the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had been noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow. He sat his boss down and he told him that he deeply admired him for being a creative genius.

The boss seemed very surprised. The junior executive asked him if he would accept the gift of the blue ribbon and would he give him permission to put it on him. His surprised boss said, 'Well sure.' The junior executive took the blue ribbon and placed it right on his boss's jacket above his heart. As he gave him the last extra ribbon, he said, 'Would you do me a favor? Would you take this extra ribbon and pass it on by honoring somebody else? The young boy who first gave me the ribbons is doing a project in school and we want to keep this recognition ceremony going and find out how it affects people.'

That night the boss came home to his 14-year old son and sat him down. He said, 'The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was in my office and one of the junior executives came in and told me he admired me and gave me a blue ribbon for being a creative genius. Imagine. He thinks I'm creative genius.'

'Then he put this blue ribbon that says, 'Who I Am Makes A Difference' on my jacket above my heart. He gave me an extra ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with this ribbon and thought of you. I want to honor you. My days are really hectic and when I come home I don't pay a lot of attention to you.

Sometimes I scream at you for not getting good enough grades in school and for your bedroom being a mess, but somehow tonight, I just wanted to sit here and, well, just let you know that you do make a difference to me. Besides your mother, you are the most important person in my life. You're a great kid and I love you!'

The startled boy started to sob and sob, and he couldn't stop crying. His whole body shook. He looked up at his father and said through his tears, 'I was planning on committing suicide tomorrow, Dad, because I didn't think you loved me. Now I know you care. This is the happiest day I've known.'

The boss went back to work a changed man. He was no longer a grouch but made sure to let all his employees know that they made a difference.

The junior executive helped several other young people with career planning and never forgot to let them know that they made a difference in his life - one being the boss' son. And the young boy and his classmates learned a valuable lesson.

So who you are DOES make a difference and I wanted you to know that.

A snowflake is one of the most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!

Joy is not in things, it is in us.

Something not to laugh about

If they know of him at all, many folks think Ben Stein is just a quirky actor/comedian who talks in a monotone. He's also a very intelligent attorney who knows how to put ideas and words together in such a way as to sway juries and make people think clearly.
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The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary:

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Chri stmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don' t feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don 't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
___________________________________

sorry guys, this part's the urban myth (see my post below):

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found rece ntly) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about and we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Jud,

That caught my attention more than anything in a long time...take that as a compliment, guy!!!   Because, I'm not too much into "the warm & fuzzy's, or the "philosophy's of life" kind of posts.   If I though my 15 yr old son would heed your wisdom, I would make that required reading.  But I remember being 15, too.

Mike (huskercat), thanks for the compliment and I agree. 

Yet, I started reading up on Madalyn O'Hair and found a few urban myths about her.  That got me thinking, so I googled the account above and found out that I got duped.  Sorry about that.  It so happens that just the first part of it is real and the second part is fake.

Here's the write up on the Urban Myth. 

Here's the Stuff Ben Wrote.

The part of your post above that is spurious may not be a part of what Ben Stein said or may not be an accurate quote.  It does, however, echo what can be heard from a hundred (I am being very conservative in that figure) pulpits in America every Sunday.

Here's my perspective:

I am a Christian.  I have been a Christian since I was fifteen.  I became a Christian after prayer was removed from schools, after Dr. Spock, after Ms. O'Hare began her attack on public expressions of Christianity, after the rise of secularism in the culture.

When I was in public school I was at my most zealous, with a fire of new found faith that fueled my every action and attitude.  I was surrounded by no public expressions of faith, but somehow individual Christians still found the courage to express their faith at every opportunity.  I became a teenage evangelist and was preaching three to five times a week before I graduated from high school.

I went to a Christian college where I was surrounded by expressions of faith, where chapel once a week was required and Bible 111, 112, and 113 were required subjects, where a dozen Bible studies met every night of the week.  My faith began to become complacent.  It became part  of the mundane.  It no longer had the freshness I had come to expect.  I started one of very few outreach groups that extended beyond our little campus, reaching out to prisons, nursing homes and street people.  I personally headed up the street ministry.  Reaching beyond myself to the not so Christian world revived my faith and kept it alive.

When I went to a good solid conservative seminary in Kentucky for a year, my faith reached a low point.  It seemed there were so many cheery plastic people around me.  I felt like the only sinner in the holy city.  The challenge was gone that had kept me zealous and motivated in the midst of adversity. 

I transferred to another, more liberal, seminary and began to pastor a church.  I felt the old zeal return for a time.  Over the course of the next decade, however, (as holy things became commonplace, mundane, part of my job) I began to burn out.  Everybody knew me as Rev. Ebner.  Everyone talked only about holy subjects around me.  The adversity in which I had thrived was gone, and so much of what I did felt like going through the motions.  I did not lose my faith, but it simply was not special any more.  One of the things I hated most was praying at public functions.  It was so often such a shallow activity, so generic.  I left the ministry as a career.

In the past few years I have recovered much of my motivation.  I have understood what I do as a catadjuster to clearly be ministry, sometimes more important ministry than what I did as a pastor.  I also preach again from time to time.  I believe I have something important to say once again.  My faith can withstand a Madelyn Murray O'Hare, a Dr. Spock, removal of "In God We Trust"  from my money.  What it cannot withstand is becoming ordinary or taken for granted.  There is a reason that Jesus told a Pharisee (a devoutly religious person) named Nicodemus, "You must be born again to enter the kingdom of God."

For those who see removal of public expressions of Christianity as harmful to the culture, I will not disagree with you.  What I have shared here is my own individual profession of faith and not a blueprint for anyone else.  I have always found my faith flourishes in adversity, that a Christian counter-culture brings me to a more zealous devotion.  I believe I have seen this in the United States during my lifetime, as well.  The complacent Christianity of the 50's and early 60's has awakened into several movements which have fought back against the cultural challenges and become stronger for the effort.

Now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been...

Let this coming year be better than all the others. Vow to do some of the things you've always wanted to do but couldn't find the time. ... Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. ... Vow not to make a promise you don't think you can keep. ... Walk tall, and smile more. You'll look 10 years younger. Don't be afraid to say, "I love you". Say it again. They are the sweetest words in the world.