Always. Unceasingly. In Everything.

When I was in Africa three years ago, I travelled for a month by car with a group of people through six different countries. To get from one place to the next, we were constantly covering a lot of ground in very little time. I remember how it was difficult to feel as though I were really there as we raced past countryside. Catching glimpses of African life through the windows of a vehicle felt more like watching a movie than living. In an attempt to capture the blur I was hurtling through, I had a friend put my camera on a setting that allowed me to snap pictures while in motion. I got a lot of pictures that way, but t's funny how looking back at them, I still feel a sense of disapointment of never feeling present during the snapshots of time when those pictures were taken.

Except.

Except I remember how I felt each time we stopped the vehicle. Gas or food or toilets called us to a halt every so often and I can still feel the wonder of stepping out into reality. My senses instantly made me acutely aware of my surroundings. I could see, I could hear, I could smell . . . I could feel the moment I was living. It filled me with awe. It felt wonderful.

So often I live my life inside a vehicle that blurs the moments I'm living into eachother until they are indecipherable. I find myself moving through the motion picture of my life, constantly propelled forward by what feels like an urgent necessity to always be somewhere I''m not. I want to enjoy and appreciate and feel what I'm living, but in the rush of day-to-day life, how can I do those things if I can't even see the moments as I live them? My life isn't divided into moments. It's divided into dates, and responsibilities, and obligations, and appointments, and deadlines: these are the placeholders of time. And they so often rob me of living fully in the present.

But I am discovering a secret.

I am discovering the moments.
I am discovering the moments by discovering God.
I am discovering God by learning to be thankful.

I've noticed lately that when God wants to so something in my life, it seems He comes at me from all angles with the same message. Lately my message from God is: be thankful. I am aware that I have many things to thankful for, but I usually leave it at that. God is teaching me to be thankful for specifics. It's amazing to name the blessings of life as they happen. I have begun to feel overwhelmed by the blessings. My heart is starting to overflow with God's goodness to me. Not because I can finally see how great my life is. No, but because I can finally see how great and apparent God's hand is in my life. I can finally see that I am never alone and that always He is with me. This past week I had the most usual, busy, stress-filled long day and walked home from work with my heart singing out, "God is here! God is here! He's really, really here with me now!"

The perspective of my life is changing. I have zoomed out of a close-up of myself, and zoomed into a close-up of the details of God's goodness. One by one, I see them as they happen. His goodness in the good, and His goodness in the bad. I've become thankful for things in my life that up until now haven't seemed good to me. Past and present, I'm coming to see His wisdom, sense His love, and feel the grace He supplies for the moments as I live them. I'm finally feeling the moments.

First Thessalonians five contains verses I've long thought were beautiful: Always rejoice, Unceasingly pray, In everything give thanks. Those always seemed like nice words I would like to live out. But how? These verses have been working in me lately, and I've come to notice that by becoming thankful in everything, I'm also becoming more joyful, and that by naming my thanks moment by moment, my life is becoming more of an unceasing prayer to my Father. Thankfulness is unlocking the key to the life these verses describe. Always, unceasingly and in everything can be pretty heavy demands. But I've come to see that they are our promises - rejoicing and praying and giving thanks: these things are the will of God in Christ for us! And not just sometimes for some things: always, unceasingly and in everything.

Give thanks to Him; bless His name!
For the Lord is good.
(Psalm 100:4-5)