Greetings, Refresh Readers!
It’s my pleasure to introduce one of my favorite writers. Meet Karen Wingate. Karen is an author, speaker, and Bible study leader living in Tucson Arizona with her husband, Jack, and their cat, Moses. She and I have collaborated long distance (thank you, technology) for more than ten years. Now she’s joined Our Daily Bread Publishing and is launching her second book, Grateful Heart: 60 Reasons to Give Thanks in All Things. She’s also launching her third, With Open Ears: 60 Reflections on the Wonder of Sound from a Woman Born Blind, with Kregel Publications. Twin book babies! What a woman 🙂
I knew you’d love Karen and her writing, so I asked if I could share an excerpt from one of her books. Leave her some kind words in the comment section and hop on over to Amazon or your favorite bookseller and grab copies of both books—and one for a friend.
~Lori
How to Give Thanks for Everything
By Karen Wingate
Gratitude comes easily the third week of November. Everyone is in a “count your blessings” kind of mood. We have the anticipation of the holidays—the lights and decorations, incoming family, the joy and wonder expressed on the faces of the little ones, and all those yummy treats. We ponder once again the meaning of Emanuel—God With us–and we delight in our spiritual blessings that Jesus, through His entrance into the world, has poured out upon our lives.
Then the winter holidays pass into the past. The lights go out. The family leaves. Credit card bills replace table decorations. Weight scale numbers increase, and wallet dollars decrease. And some of those holiday memories aren’t so happy.
You renew your efforts to make reading God’s Word a priority and might, like I did, find that verse from 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Then Paul had to go and say it again—this time in Ephesians 5:20: “Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Is this possible? Can we be grateful for everything, even in the worst of life moments? How do we stay grateful when life doesn’t cooperate?
Our eternal God is capable of consistency in all things even in the middle of our uneven, unpredictable lives. He never changes. He is always with us, and He is forever faithful.
Gratitude still comes slowly. How can we reach toward consistent gratitude no matter what happens in our lives? We can give thanks for everything when we remember what God has done in the past, celebrate what we have in the present, and anticipate with hope what God has promised in the future.
The Past: We all have stories of how we have seen God provide for us and rescue us. I don’t want to be like the Israelites who, days after witnessing God’s miraculous rescue from the Egyptians by parting the Red Sea, started whining about water. Pausing to gratefully remember what God has done in the past relaxes us and reassures us that if God has done it once, He can do it again.
The Present: I have a severe visual impairment. For fifty years, I bore the label of legal blindness. Then an unexpected surgery gave me better eyesight than I’ve ever had before. Even so, my vision is far from normal, and the entire structure of my eyes is fragile, warning me that I may yet lose more vision. But I have the vision that I have today. I can see. And I have the choice to fear the future and mourn the lost years, or to celebrate the wonder of what I see today.
Thank God for what you see, hear, and experience in this moment. Revel in the people connections that have blessed your life today. When you focus on gratitude for what you have, the taunt of what you don’t have will slip to the side of your thinking and blur like objects caught in your peripheral vision.
The Future: Thanking God for what He has promised that you don’t yet have takes an extra dose of faith. Yet this is what God calls us to do—to look beyond the seen to the unseen. You can thank God now for His future protection and for how this difficult portion of life will pass. You can praise Him now that He will ultimately provide an eternal home for you, even if you have no glimpse of Heaven’s halls.
When we are grateful for all things, we’ll discover we don’t need things to make us grateful. We can find contentment in any life moment, no matter what happens, because we’ve discovered God is a good, loving, faithful, and powerful God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His consistent nature makes it possible for us to give thanks for everything, no matter what.
~Karen Wingate
FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY
Today, I’m giving away a free copy of Karen’s new book, With Open Ears. If you’d like to be entered into the drawing, share this post with someone and leave a comment sharing three things you’re grateful for today. At the end of the week, we’ll enter you into a drawing and choose a winner. You’ll receive your book in the mail.
READ THE BOOKS!
Add Karen’s two latest books to your 2025 reading plan:
Grateful Heart: 60 Reasons to Give Thanks in All Things. Award-winning author Karen Wingate shares practical, everyday ways to experience thankfulness for what God provides, no matter what your circumstances might be. Reflecting on her journey with fragile vision after being born blind and receiving restorative surgery as an adult, Karen will inspire you to explore the power of giving thanks.
With Open Ears: 60 Reflections on the Wonder of Sound from a Woman Born Blind. Stop. Take a moment to listen. What do you hear around you? God filled the world with sound, weaving a tapestry of melodies and rhythms that invite you to marvel at the splendor and power of creation. Through the gift of hearing, we have the ability to appreciate the symphony of life and find beauty in the gentle whispers of wind, the roaring of waterfalls, and the choruses of birdsong. Each sound is a divine invitation to pause, listen, and learn more about God’s character and creation.
You can find out more about Karen and her writing/speaking ministry at www.karenwingate.com
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