*Be sure to read an important note attached to the bottom of this blog*
Many of you are reading this on or around Thanksgiving. Most often, this time of year, there are lists of things we can be thankful for. To be honest, some of these lists include things that we worked diligently to produce. I quickly created a list to include those “gifts” for which we had no part in producing, yet for which we can be grateful:
- Our mind’s cognitive capacity which provides us the ability to learn and to continue to grow in our capacity to think, intuit, grow, and mature in many ways
- Our past and present emotional processing which allows us to be products of our past but not prisoners
- Ability to remember good and bad memories
- Ability to recognize others
- Sustaining relationships which were initiated by chance outside our family
- An opportunity to have a fulfilling, sustaining, and gracious relationship with our creator
- The plant life throughout the earth which ingests CO2 and produces O2 to sustain life
- The earth is just the right size, just the right distance from the sun, with an atmosphere which is just the right thickness and composition, and rotating at just the right speed to produce and sustain life
- Beautiful sunrises and sunsets
- Majestic mountainscapes
- Breathtaking oceans
- Fish
- Coral
- Seascapes
- Ability to balance, climb, walk, or run
- Our eyes, hearts, sinuses, liver, kidneys, stomach, intestines, lungs, and many other organs which function so miraculously that our best attempts to replicate them still fall substantially short
- Our vocal cords which give us the ability to speak and sing
- The family in which you were born, for good or bad
- The country in which you were born for good or bad
- This time in history in which you were born for good or bad
Each of us can think of people (ourselves) who may not have experienced some of these previously identified gifts. Also, over the entire history of mankind, we have continued to destroy or degrade many of these gifts which were freely given to us. Which brings me to this last one…
- The creative God who loved me enough to provide an opportunity for restoration of all these gifts despite my repeated selfish and sinful disregard for them through coming to earth in the person of his son, Jesus Christ.
Your turn: name some more things in the comments below for which you are thankful and yet had no part in creating.
A final thought to consider:
Next Tuesday is “Giving Tuesday” which I really don’t think we need a special day set aside to support our passions. However, many of you know that I started Health Growing Leaders (HGL) fifteen years ago because I have a passion to engage leaders toward health and impact. Everything I do from writing this blog, creating assessment instruments, debriefing leaders and then developing them to find their focus in this passion. I have pursued this for the last 15 years and anticipate doing so as long as I live. (Personally, I don’t see retirement from one’s calling in the scriptures short of death.) I love what I do and therefore will continue to do so.
As a 501(c)3, not for profit organization, we are also committed to creating a future which is not dependent only on me. I have been asked by those who benefit from this passion to ensure that HGL’s products and services continue beyond me. So we are seeking to raise $100,000 before the end of the year for HGL to be sustainable and scalable well in the future. This also allows us to serve those who don’t have the resources to fully pay us for what we do.
I began writing this blog almost three years ago and have never mentioned support of our ministry. This is a rare season in the life of HGL and I love HGL enough to do it now. I would so appreciate you helping us get to this end of year goal. Please pray about it and if you or someone you know would like to know why we are passionate, or would be willing to invest in our future, I would sincerely appreciate it.
https://www.healthygrowingleaders.com/give
Thanks much
g
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