Categories
Life(style)

#AdventBookClub: Day 14: Thankfulness for Now

Thank_You_Card

Interesting activity from Ron Glusenkamp today:

Count how many clocks, watches and digital timepieces you have in your home today, and write down that number of reasons to give thanks to God for time.

I love seeing #3goodthings on Twitter – always cheers me up, and remember going on a course on emotional intelligence when he said – name 3 things you’re thankful for, and people were struggling to think of things to articulate. Powerfully, he said – every day we have more things to be thankful for than not – e.g. every breath we take, but we can struggle to focus on that! So I’m thinking – 2 in the kitchen, 1 in the spare room, 1 in the bedroom, 3 digital devices, and a watch…

Brian Draper continues to think about the idea of letting go, and remembering Maggi talking about our need to not think that we are indispensable:

Decide positively not to do something, today; then don’t do it.

Well, I did decide work could wait and that I would read instead – but I fell asleep instead, then down to the TV – there’s definitely a difference in ‘tension’ if you lie there thinking “I still need to do stuff”, and recognising that today it just ain’t gonna happen, and letting the day go = it’s hard, as I’ve been seeking to get on top of things, and ways to get slightly ahead for 2014, and not quite feeling there yet! The focus, however, has got me a long way – so guess I should be thankful for that!

Amazingly reading from Habbakuk (as Rich says!) – continuing the theme from ‘yesterday’ – Maggi gives us a sense of needing to let go (‘a death’) in order to allow space for new life, and a great message that fits with the other thoughts from today:

… not to wait for circumstances to improve before I start to celebrate life. Life is a gift from God, and we do not know how many days we have.

An encouragement not to waste our lives waiting, but to recognise that waiting is a part of life … a reminder that Greenbelt’s theme recently was to live in the NOW, as we wait for the not yet.

By admin

Dr Bex Lewis is passionate about helping people engage with the digital world in a positive way, where she has more than 20 years’ experience. She is Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University and Visiting Research Fellow at St John’s College, Durham University, with a particular interest in digital culture, persuasion and attitudinal change, especially how this affects the third sector, including faith organisations, and, after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2017, has started to research social media and cancer. Trained as a mass communications historian, she has written the original history of the poster Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth Behind the Poster (Imperial War Museum, 2017), drawing upon her PhD research. She is Director of social media consultancy Digital Fingerprint, and author of Raising Children in a Digital Age: Enjoying the Best, Avoiding the Worst  (Lion Hudson, 2014; second edition in process) as well as a number of book chapters, and regularly judges digital awards. She has a strong media presence, with her expertise featured in a wide range of publications and programmes, including national, international and specialist TV, radio and press, and can be found all over social media, typically as @drbexl.

2 replies on “#AdventBookClub: Day 14: Thankfulness for Now”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.