Gratitude Booster Shot
The news this week boasts of more treatments for COVID, booster shots for all adults, shots for children. I, personally, am grateful that we are in a much better spot in this pandemic than we were last Thanksgiving, though there we are not free and clear of it yet. Because COVID still wreaks havoc on our sense of certainty and safety COVID still impacts all of us to some degree and is still very much worthy of our prayers and precautions.
Did you know that there is a vaccine for the mental, relational and spiritual effects of coronavirus! It’s actually the same vaccine for all anxiety, fear and stress. It’s been around for centuries. Paul prescribes it in Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Gratitude and prayer have scientific evidence showing that it can improve happiness, lower stress, and weaken anxiety and depression. Now it’s no cure, just as no vaccine is a cure, but it can protect against the worst of symptoms in most people.
Perhaps this is timely given it’s Thanksgiving that we get a gratitude booster shot from Paul. I invite you to not only pray the prayer below, but to take time 2-3 times each week to list 5 things you are thankful for and then simply pray that list to God saying ‘thank you.’
Thanks be to God for our shared journey in this life together!
Prayer for Thanksgiving:
For the expanding grandeur of creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations:
We give thanks this day.
For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, its sunsets and seasons:
We give thanks this day.
For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises, its hopes and achievements:
We give thanks this day.
For our human community, our common past and future hope, our oneness transcending all separation, our capacity to work for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression:
We give thanks this day.
For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism, for understanding of views not shared:
We give thanks this day.
For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world, who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom:
We give thanks this day.
For human liberty and sacred rites; for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose:
We give thanks this day.
We pray that we may live not by our fears but by our hopes, not by our words but by our deeds.
We give thanks this day.
– O. Eugene Pickett