{"id":526,"date":"2003-10-12T23:12:09","date_gmt":"2003-10-13T04:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=526"},"modified":"2003-10-12T23:12:09","modified_gmt":"2003-10-13T04:12:09","slug":"thankfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=526","title":{"rendered":"Thankfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the Thanksgiving celebrations of my Canadian brothers and sisters, I thought I&#8217;d play off of <a href=\"http:\/\/richard.peacefulwaters.org\">Richard<\/a> (who has a *STUNNING* new layout created by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cre8d-design.com\/journal\">the lovely Rachel<\/a>) and his <a href=\"http:\/\/richard.peacefulwaters.org\/index.php?m=200310#95605137\">latest post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Last November, I finally broke down and attended a small group at church after avoiding them.  I was talking with our then congregational council president and she imparted a piece of wisdom that has been really meaningful this year.  She said:<\/p>\n<p><i>I Thessalonians 5:18 does not read &#8220;<b>for<\/b> everything give thanks.&#8221;  It reads &#8220;<b>in<\/b> everything give thanks.&#8221;  You may not be able to give thanks for everything but you can praise God in all your circumstances.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>She is so right &#8212; we may not give thanks for our circumstances; but we can *always* give thanks while in them.  I can give thanks even after losing my job.  I can give thanks after beng denied candidacy.  I can give thanks even after burying a close family member.  Why?  Because the God I serve is a God of justice and mercy and a God who has a purpose for everything under Heaven.  That alone is worth some major thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the Thanksgiving celebrations of my Canadian brothers and sisters, I thought I&#8217;d play off of Richard (who has a *STUNNING* new layout created by the lovely Rachel) and his latest post. Last November, I finally broke down &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=526\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-8u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}