Give Thanks
Give thanks to the Lord, because He is good: His love is eternal. Cf Ps 136.
We feel greatly blessed to be part of the journey of the year 2025, with all the good and challenging experiences associated with the year. As it is normal for all human experiences, there will be good days, and some days will show marks of negativity. Despite all we might have gone through, we just need to keep expressing our sense of Gratitude to God who is the author of all things and our key strength in the journey of life.
As much as we appreciate the indispensability of human efforts and struggles for a wonderful year, the eternal providential role of God is what constitutes the key aspect for our survival for each day and each year. Most of the elements for our survival and sustainability do not even come from human struggles or labor, they are sheer blessings and gifts of God that we do not even have control over. We must always then keenly appreciate the unending love of God that keeps sustaining us moment by moment or day by day. It is not out of place to acknowledge, despite our unfailing struggles for the year to be beautiful and worthwhile, to acknowledge the supreme place of God in seeing us through the year with all the gifts of nature and blessings of supernatural interventions in many facets of life in the year.
We live by the strength He provides for us to navigate simple and complex experiences of life. Even in the reality of weariness and exhaustion in the body and the mind, we get rejuvenated through the channels He provides for us. We keep understanding the value of God’s unfailing providence and presence in our lives when we focus on the reality that sustains our lives outside our human control and efforts and then know that survival is not just about human strength and energy but by God’s unending love.
The air we breathe in, the water we utilize for different purposes, the land we stand on amongst other natural elements, how do they come about? Do we have other substitutes for them that are products of human ingenuity? Can we really do without nature and find other means of surviving, since we do not need what God has provided, since we want to stand on our own? We often claim that we do not need God, then, why can we turn our back completely from what He has provided and create our own elements that will have nothing to do with has been available to us through the gift of nature.
Thanks to the truth of faith that opens us to this unshakable reality expressed thus: “All good things around us are sent from above, then we must thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all His Love.” we look at the blessings of God through Nature and the Environment and our normal reaction should be a great sense of gratitude to God who gives us all these without our own contributions. Our claims to the value of human efforts are premised on the support of the blessings of nature that fuel and propel the human efforts. No human power can exist or have independent actualization outside the sustaining energy coming from the gifts of God, made available to us through the natural and supernatural processes. Human power thrives within the context of the gifts of God to us. Let us keep being grateful and give honor to whom honor is due. We lose nothing when we do this and we are not in any way undermined by just acknowledging that it is by God we live and move.
Wishing us a new year filled with gratitude, love and peace. We remain blessed for knowing the truth about God and how much He loves us through the gift of His providence and salvation. We count our blessings day after day, and we remain grateful. God’s blessings on us all.