3MN: What sleepless nights & a Nazi-fighting pastor taught me about gratitude.
Happy Thursday!
In the next 3 minutes:
- My 3 am wake-up call and why I let self-pity go today.
- Do you consider your life filled to the brim with God's goodness?
- Why I write a grateful sentence every day.
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Minute 1 - The pastor who plotted the assassination of Hitler and ended up a martyr.
3 am. Again.
My son, bless his tiny heart, seems to think this is a perfectly reasonable hour to greet the day. Twice this week, the sunrise has found him wide-eyed and raring to go, leaving me a sleep-deprived husk staring down a mountain of work.
Just as the self-pity monster was rearing its ugly head, I stumbled upon the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was the pastor who plotted the assassination of Hitler and ended up a martyr.
His last letters from prison, penned as he awaited execution, brimmed with faith in the face of death. Yeah, that kind of perspective puts a whole new spin on a rough week with a newborn.
Minute 2 - Filled to the brim with God's goodness.
Bonhoeffer urged his friend, Eberhard Bethage, not to have anxious thoughts or worry about him in prison.
Then Bonhoeffer wrote,
I am so certain of God's hand and guidance that I hope I may be kept in such certainty always. You must never doubt that I am thankfully and cheerfully going along the path on which I am being led. My past life is filled to the brim with God's goodness, and the forgiving love of the Crucified covers my guilt (emphasis added).
Minute 3 - I write a grateful sentence every day.
Some people still have telephone landlines.
But they mostly use them to call their cell phone because they have forgotten where they left it.
And they need the cell phone because it has an app that helps them find their car keys, for they have forgotten where they put their car keys.
We forget things all the time. God's goodness is not immune to our forgetfulness. Bonhoeffer, despite finding himself in one of the most terrible places, remembers God's goodness. And he calls on his friend, through this letter, to remember it as well.
I write a grateful sentence every day (one sentence, every day, capturing something I am grateful about). What will you do to remember?
VERSE OF THE WEEK
Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. - Psalm 103:1
See you next Thursday,
Payton Minzenmayer
P.S. - How to master the art of small talk.