Tag: Gratitude

Eucharistia: 30 Days of Gratitude

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Eucharistia is the Latin form of the Greek word Eucharist which signifies gratitude, thanks or praise offering. It is derived from the word charis which means favor, grace; and related to the Greek word chairein which signifies to rejoice.

Eucharistia is a praise offering — a celebration of the small things, God’s Everyday Grace.

As we begin this month which commemorates Thanksgiving Day, we invite you to use the next 30 days to go a little deeper and to be more intentional with cultivating a life of gratitude. With that in mind, we offer the following practices as a starting point.

During the month of November, we invite you to:

  • gratefully notice God’s presence and gifts throughout the day
  • practice an abundance mentality; counting the blessings of life
  • gratefully give and share all you are and have as a sign of your thankfulness to God
  • express gratitude to others; the habit of saying “thank you,” “I am so grateful,” “you are so kind” and so forth
  • keep a gratitude journal of the myriad gifts God has brought you [*]

As you start to pay attention to your everyday graces and begin to enjoy the fruits of such practices, consider encouraging someone else by sharing your experience on our Instagram or Facebook feed by telling us how you are practicing gratitude and/or what you are thankful for. Please submit your post with the hashtags #30dayEucharistia #Thanksgiving2017 and #Sabătica.

We pray that at the end of the 30 days, you will continue to count your blessings; we pray you will continue to live with a grateful heart.

Sola Gratia,
Christine

*Contributed by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Gather me to be with you…

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O GOD, gather me now to be with you as you are with me.

Soothe my tiredness;
quiet my fretfulness;
curb my aimlessness;
receive my compulsiveness;
let me be easy for a moment.

O LORD, release me from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly;
from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip,
that I may be open to receiving,
to learn something refreshingly different.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
Forgive me for claiming so much for myself
that I leave no room for gratitude;
for confusing exercises in self-importance
with acceptance of self-worth;
for complaining so much of my burdens that I become a burden;
for competing against others so insidiously
that I stifle celebrating them and receiving your blessing
through their gifts.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
Keep me in touch with myself,
with my needs,
my anxieties,
my angers,
my pains,
my corruptions,
that I may claim them as my own
rather than blame them on someone else.

O LORD, deepen my wounds into wisdom;
shape my weakness into compassion;
gentle my envy into enjoyment,
my fear into trust,
my guilt into honesty,
my accusing finger into tickling ones.

O GOD, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

– Ted Loder