It has occurred to me recently, as I’ve talked about making Gingerbread Houses, creating Gifts in a Jar, and especially doing much of my shopping online to find special gifts on sale through Amazon…

We are beyond blessed. 

I have been reflecting about this anyway during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, but I was especially “pricked in the heart” as I was looking into Trades of Hope and learning more about the women in those countries. These families are doing everything they can just to protect themselves, put food on the table, and educate their children. And here I am, in my very comfortable home with plenty of food – and not just the beans and rice kind of food, but treat kinds of food like Hot Cocoa and Muffins. We have shelves and shelves of books to read and learn from. We have too many toys to play with, which is evident by how they are spilling out onto the floor where they don’t belong.

And I’m sitting at my nice computer shopping for presents??? 

Sure, I am being practical as I choose our gifts. Sure, I am being responsible with our spending, even using more gift cards I’ve earned through Swagbucks than actual money for our purchases and finding good deals and discounted prices. But the very fact that we are able to buy our kids (and extended family) gifts that they need or want – I cannot take that for granted.

Need I feel guilty that we have so much when others have so little? No. But I do feel called to be responsible, to be generous, and to continue to pray for wisdom as we make decisions each day about how to spend our money, energy, and time.

I’ll just say it again. We are beyond blessed. And I am so, so grateful.

Share how God is working in your life on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for! Please read through the Gratituesday Guidelines so that you understand what kinds of posts you can link up to share here. Posts that are linked but do not fit our Gratituesday theme will be deleted.

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!