Early each morning, I hear a mournful hooting sound from the train that crosses Coventry Road, a few blocks away. Soon the local dog chorus starts howling — and I swear one of them is a soprano.
Some days, as I sip my first cup of coffee, I step out onto the front porch. Often I see the squirrel that my husband and I rescued last spring when he was a baby that had fallen from the nest.
He is now fat and furry and quite independent, but whenever I offer him a peanut, he cautiously edges close enough to take it gently from my hand.
Other days, as I sit writing in my study, I see bluebirds darting through our small backyard forest. Or that same squirrel snoozing on a sunny limb.
In the evening, I pick up my gratitude journal and jot down descriptions of these small moments of grace when I feel God’s presence in my life.
I began the journal a few months ago when my life suddenly veered in a dark direction. I realized we have a choice: continue the downward spiral into dejection or try to pull ourselves up.
But how to do that? Reading Scripture helps remove the spotlight from ourselves and put it back on God and neighbor. I also greedily begged my neighbors, friends and family for prayers.
But I also reminded myself of God’s generous love.
Sometimes it is too easy to overlook him. We may think he’s so busy running the universe and handling the million-and-one prayers coming his way that our trials and troubles are almost too pitiful to mention.
Still, he is our father — and a doting dad notices even the tiniest tug from a child’s arm on his sleeve, or the smallest whimper of protest.
I whimpered plenty, especially when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — and suddenly my husband and I were faced with endless decisions about her care.
It soon became clear, though, that if I fretted too much over these troubles, I would miss the world around me, which overflows with God’s graces each moment.
I may be the only one on the block who steps outside the moment a wily woodpecker is sipping from the birdbath. Or a chipmunk is chirping for its mate.
There’s an old puzzle about a tree falling in the forest. If no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? If you just take a human-centered approach to everything, then I suppose the answer is no.
But God’s creatures hear the sound — and so does he.
Thanksgiving beckons us to reflect on our big gifts — our freedom, our faith and our family. And let’s pause to be grateful for the small things, too.
Maybe it’s a hound howling, a train trilling, a baby babbling or a sparrow singing. Maybe it’s a shy orchid blooming quietly on a windowsill.
These ordinary graces are gifts from God’s hand. When he created the universe, he declared that it was good. And it is also good for us to pause and say, “Yes, it is, dear Lord — and thank you!”
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