real thanks

so thankfulness. i wrote a kinda cheese ball entry about being thankful and all that. but i really am. There is so much I could say about how blessed I am and how awesome life is for me because Jesus has really given me so much more then i ever even come close to deserving. and thats just it, I deserve to die. I have zero right to be alive and functioning and like driving my own car talking on my cell phone choosing from my million pairs of shoes, none of that.

there is this part of The Hiding Place where Corrie Ten Boom is telling her sister to be greatful for the lice. Lets paint this picture here, they are in a concentration camp, everything of theirs has been taken away their clothes their family their world, they're being tortured and starved and she says "Betsy be thankful for the lice" because the lice meant that they got extra time to hide their Bible so that the guards didn't take it away. woof.
think that through again...she's giving thanks in that situation, giving thanks that she gets to keep her Bible, not that she got food or a warm jacket, not thankful because it helped her escape but thankful because she got to keep her one link left to Jesus.

That floors me.
I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to know about stuff like that. I'm thankful that Jesus is continually giving me more and more opportunities to be like that, and to learn. thankful that I have to been rejected but redeemed time and time again.

"He cannot ravish. He can only woo… the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve" - C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters