HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
I am grateful for your loyalty. Many of you have been subscribers to this blog for years–some for just days. I am blessed by every single one of you and pray for you daily. I am always blessed when one of you contacts me sharing testimonies, prayer needs, and praise reports.
Below, I’ve shared insights on the amazing benefits of our “remembering with Thanks or gratitude. It’s a two-way blessing, but is there really ever a one way blessing for those who know they are loved by their Holy Creator?
May you walk in Health and Thanksgiving every day of your life.
My Painting,“Seeds of Hope”“
Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Hebrews 11:
Gratitude is a Healing Dynamic From All Perspectives.
Secular Perspective: Dr. Jeremy Wolf, ND writes in his article, “3 Ways Gratitude Can Improve Your Health” that the emotion of gratitude indeed has measurable physical healing implications. He shares results of several studies investigating this impact and reports:
–Gratitude leads to:
–23% lower levels of stress hormone cortisol.
–Quicker surgery recovery documented in medical studies
–Better sleep which leads to better health
–Fewer physical complaints like pain, coughing, nausea
–Enhanced happiness levels by 25% (medical studies)
–Helps bond new and strengthen old friendships/relationships (soul healing)
–Focuses us on good things. (see Phil 4:8) “…whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable —if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.”
Scientific Perspective: Japanese scientist Masuru Emoto reports in his book, The Hidden Messages of Water, that water crystal experimentation indicated that even the written words, “Love” and “Gratitude” have a beautiful impact on water.
Emoto exposed many water samples gathered all over the world to written and spoken words and then photographed crystals from the samples. He reports that water exposed to written words for “love” and “gratitude” in any language produced the most perfect and beautiful ice crystals. Taken individually, gratitude was even a bit more perfect than “love” alone. The scientist’s book includes photographs taken with a special camera he invented specifically to capture crystals “in full bloom”. They are remarkable.
Realizing that the human body is about 75% water and that being grateful apparently impacts that water in a positive way, it makes sense then that the feeling of gratitude impacts a human soul and, thereby, body in a positive way. Emoto’s experimentation and results are fascinating and he shares several testimonies of the power of words even cleansing large polluted bodies of water as people surrounded these lakes and prayed with gratitude. I recommend you take a look at this book to get a unique perspective of some of the glorious connections between quantum physics and real life. Quantum physics has helped us realize the impact that words and even looks or gazes have on matter. Our bodies are, after all, made of elemental matter. Have you ever blushed? Of course, God created science so we are more blessed in it if we recognize the truth and not merely the facts. Truth, as we’ve said, aligns with God’s Word.
The Spiritual Perspective shows Love and Gratitude Amplified.
Whether or not we will it to be, God seems to have intended us to have an intimate glory encounter partaking of the Lord’s emblematic body and blood (Eucharisteo) remembering gratefully His Son and looking lovingly to His return. Holy Communion, therefore, serves to carry us from glory to glory. We become “transformed into His image”……Healing, indeed health, is a gradual progression of glory infusion—-“new creation” realization every time we come to the table. (See 2 Corinthians 3:18) Another way to say it is that it takes time for the “healing seed”, like the one in my own recent testimony, to come to full growth.
We are energized, then, to be the ‘light of the world’ while here upon it. (John 8:12) The glory of the Lord will give the new earth its light—a promise to be embraced. (Revelation 21:23) We are moving in God’s timeless glory light when we commune with Him—remembering what God’s done in the past as well as looking ahead with gratitude. I credit Dr. NT Wright with opening my eyes to these “theological truths”.
I will close with insight from the book, 1,000 Gifts, Ann Voskamp’s amazing journey through her own personal Eucharisteo, p 158 The bold type is my emphasis:
Voskamp writes, “We take the moments (of Eucharisteo) as bread and give thanks and the thanks, itself, becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes. Thanks feeds our trust. …….There is no joy without trust! . . . . for no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20)…The God whom we thank for fulfilling the promises of the past will fulfill again, His promises In Christ, the answer to the questions of every moment is always Yes.”
