Description
A year or so ago, I began working on a new song about thankfulness. It started with just a simple chorus expressing the gratitude I was feeling, and that turned into a small list of the many blessings in my life. Before long Indiana was sitting at the piano next to me, writing her own song while her Papa was writing his.
And somewhere in the process, it occurred to me that it’s not just the wonderful things that we should be thankful for, but the difficult things too. The times and seasons when it feels like our world has been turned upside down and the rain is pouring and blue skies are hard to see. We need to be thankful for them too. I know I do.
Seeing God’s hand on the good things that are happening in our lives is easy, but the bigger question is, can we see His hand upon the harder things… on the loss of a job, or of a loved one.. on a season where the ends aren’t meeting, or the doors we thought would open are being closed in our face, or even on a difficult diagnosis we receive?
This is where the rubber meets the road. Where we get the opportunity to find out what our lives and are hope is actually rooted in. Is it the world and what it has to offer: living for ourselves, pride, money, chaos and anxiety? Or is it trusting God, and what He offers: a cross to carry, death to ourselves, true joy and real peace?
I’ll take what’s behind curtain #2.
That doesn’t mean I always do it perfectly. Far from it. Like all of us, I have my moments, when my humanity wants what it wants. When I start to sulk in my self-pity, or blame others for my problems. But thankfully, the last few years I’ve gotten better at seeing that even the hardest of things end up being blessings in disguise.
I finally finished the song, and it sat on my computer for most of the last year. Until this past Thanksgiving, when our friends in Texas asked me to come sing and be part of their annual Homestead Fair, and I sent it to them to consider adding to the songs we might perform.
A few weeks later, during the Saturday evening concert, I got to see my little song about thankfulness come to life. They took what I had done and turned it in to something truly extraordinary…
*read Rory's full blog post and story at: https://roryfeek.substack.com/p/thank-you-lord