The Blessing Box

I was reorganizing "stuff" in our basement multi-purpose space...workout room, sewing room, extra-bedroom...when I came across this "Blessing Box" that sat on our dining room table and other prominent places in our home for over a decade of difficult years. These were the years that most of us go through sooner or later...years when life slaps you in the face and dares you to believe in a good God, dares you to think you are blessed, and dares you to think you have "a future and a hope".

While we were living these years I couldn't help but think of the children of Israel wandering and wondering in the desert, disobeying and repenting, and trying to understand their God.

Couldn't help but think of Job in all his grief and misery, standing before God asking to be taught, and saying humbly to God, "Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know....But now my eye sees Thee, therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:3, 6)

Couldn't help but think of David fighting his enemies and his sins, yet always able to say, "I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken....In Thy presence is fulness of joy; in Thy right hand there are pleasures forever." (Ps16:8 and 11).

  
Couldn't help but think of Jesus being tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, laying down his life to purchase ours....promising to never leave us or forsake us....us....the imperfect, yet "His bride."

Trying to wrap my mind around  the "when bad things happen to good people" thoughts when I couldn't afford the book to explain it...

I think I read about The Blessing Box as being an "intentional" way to teach our children to "Rejoice in the Lord always"...and "in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving....present your requests to God..." Phil 4:4-7

So the box would stay around in conspicuous places, so that each of us would be encouraged to "be thankful", especially during our "desert" years.  Occasionally we would draw out the words from our kids, but as they got older, they wrote notes and placed them in the box in private.

I knew in my heart then that I wanted to live out a heart of thankfulness to my children and impart that virtue to them.  I don't think I understood the profound significance it would have on my own heart. Ann Voskamp, in One Thousand Gifts calls it "eucharisteo" and "radical gratitude," "a dare to live fully right where you are," and "what it means to be....deeply human...deeply spiritual...deeply and authentically fulfilled."  I can't say it better than that.

During those years God changed me so much.  It's only in looking back at our failures and victories that we even begin to understand the "soul" surgery God was doing in our lives, the good and the bad years.  And, it's a very special walk in the garden with the Lord when he reminds me of something I did right....like the Blessing Box.....now tattered and torn....kinda like me....but hopefully better for the wear....