Gratitude – license to reframe everything

HERE is a test. Can everything be reframed — every negative thing converted to something positive? I wonder. The jury is still out, but the verdict isn’t far away.

For so long I have craved a spiritual renaissance. I sensed the need for it. I sought the Lord, and, because God speaks cogently and often, I never knew what it would look like.

At present I’m testing things. One thing I feel convinced of in my experience at present is the ability to reframe everything. It’s nothing new, it turns out. It’s biblical. It’s the gospel; the good news. Where reality is reframed, seen through a different lens, giving views from another world.

Reframing occurs in the mind and needs to happen quickly, for our thoughts influence our feelings and drive our behaviours. Like when overcoming a fleeting temptation to leer at another driver on the road for doing something incorrect when on a different day that would be me. Like recognising the therapy there is in work. Like speaking words of life instead of criticism when you look at your naked body in a mirror before showering. Like seeing the need of being patient to be grateful. Like being thankful for a gratitude project, because you don’t feel grateful. Like bodily pain as a reminder of the body’s ability to move. Like being delayed by a collision further ahead, and feeling grateful it wasn’t our accident.

I believe it’s a commitment to gratitude that challenges our perspective. It’s such a commitment that it challenges us to reframe everything. It forces us into a fresh understanding of what is possible.

Gratitude is a license to reframe everything, where such a reframing holds open possibilities that may be fitted in the place of despairing complaint.

God at the root of his heart seeks to challenge everything we think, say and do. The moment we see the truth in the power he gives us to do just that, we believe and walk by faith, not by sight.