09/04/16 Rev. David McArthur
“Outrageous Gratitude”
On awakening this morning, did you tell yourself, “I’m glad you woke up this morning!”? We take it for granted. At night you go somewhere else, experiencing and learning. Each morning you come back to the 3rd dimension. You are one with the infinite power of the universe that creates and sustains this universe and who knows what else.
Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come. He told them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…the kingdom of God is within you.” It is a state of awareness of the presence of the divine within. Our beautiful capacity to be able to know this expands as we are more aware. Science has proven that this changes the body. We are then able to perceive a new consciousness through appreciation. It’s measurable, verifiable. Our capacity to see beauty expands. It’s a greater experience of seeing the presence of the divine. It lifts us. It literally raises the flow of spiritual energy in us. We become more sensitive, attuned to the guidance and wisdom with in us. So say I am grateful!
Most of us have been grateful after the beauty has been revealed. But there’s another place to have gratitude—before we see the goodness. That’s not just gratitude, it’s outrageous gratitude! I got to see this. Today we have with us Anastacia Jayet, who wrote the book “Shattered into Being”. She and I have a connection. We both were students at the University of New Mexico. We each had a happy family with a new baby. And we both lost our spouse suddenly and violently. Her life became a state of helplessness. Slowly she began to return. She says in her book, “I am being shown the way, a place of light, through gratitude.” Outrageous. So when your story is too heavy, I am grateful, and awaken to a greater awareness.
Richard Weinman was a man whose wife had Alzheimer’s. When she passed he was assessing the changes in his life, when a cement truck hit him head-on. He awoke three months later in a hospital bed. His body was held together with screws. He’d be bound to a wheel chair. And when he was placed in a care facility, every moment every day was regimented. He began to use a powerful thing. “I could weep over what I couldn’t do, or I could be grateful for what I could do. I was a writer and a professor. I could write again.” He wrote with a stick on a computer keyboard. He wrote a blog about his life. It became a book which is now given to caregivers in many states. He was invited to the White House to be on the council on aging. He didn’t decide to do that when he was in his hospital room where he couldn’t type, where he was in pain, controlled by others. There he only chose to be grateful. Outrageous.
You are a spiritual being and you made the choice to wake up this morning and come here, to show up because you have purpose. If you are in an experience, you have purpose and you have amazing power to choose to feel grateful. Bring that magnificent wisdom of your spiritual self to create the Kingdom, the state of consciousness where you are aware of that goodness, that love, and that purpose, by making a choice. I am grateful! I am grateful! I am grateful! –grateful for that amazing love there every moment, responding.
And for the amazing state of consciousness of your love and gratitude, I am grateful!