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We can live with gratitude even in difficult times.

Written by Mark D. Roberts. Categories include De Pree Journal.

Paul states that his listeners are letters. Living letters. Letters from Christ. So it is with you. Your life is a living letter and it is being read by others in this daily and ordinary life. Not only that, but Paul states that the Spirit is the ink. I imagine a dynamic and catalytic Spirit engaged in our lives and calling. I love the idea of an active spirit that is always moving in every page and chapter of our lives. What an encouragement it is to be co-creating a story with God’s own Spirit and our very lives!

After Ebenezer Scrooge was supernaturally transformed, he proclaimed, “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!”

Ephesians 5:15 begins, “Be very careful, then, how you live.” A more literal translation of the original Greek might read, “Examine carefully how you are living.” Sounds quite a bit like Socrates, doesn’t it? This verse doesn’t tell us to live carefully so much as it exhorts us to pay close attention to how we’re living. It wants us to examine our lives so that we might live more intentionally and more fully.

God wants us to discover how to live Christianly in the situations to which he has assigned us: our marriages, our friendships, our workplaces, our communities.

We also need to stop moving, to stop hurrying on to the next thing so we can take time to think about how we’re living. I’m not suggesting we have to overthink everything. But I do believe we need to pause regularly so we might examine carefully how we’re living in the present moment and where we’re headed in the next moment.

How we live each day should reflect the fact that we have been set apart by God for relationship with him and for participation in his work.