Thankfulness, Week 1

 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13 New International Version)

In November 2014, I shared with you thirty things which I am thankful for, posting a month’s worth of blogs on the topic. I certainly have more than thirty things to be thankful for this year (and every year), but thought I would write about just a few of them during my Sunday blogs over the next four weeks.

I checked the Bible Gateway website, in search of four appropriate Bible verses which talk about being thankful. It was pretty tough to narrow it down to just four. Using the New International Version of the Bible (the one I am most familiar with), there are 133 verses containing the word “thank” or a variation of it, 48 verses with the phrase “give thanks” and 30 verses with the word “thanksgiving”. Hmm? How to pick just four?

Which brings me to the first thing I am thankful for today. The word of God. Those 66 books of the Bible, those nearly 1,200 chapters, over 31,000 verses, a lot of words, a lot of pages. But all of them sharing the message of God’s salvation and love for us. All of them meaningful.

I admit, I’ve only read through the entire Bible one time, but I’ve read enough bits and pieces of it, chapters or books at a time, that I’ve surely read 31,000 verses many times over.

I’m thankful that I have several versions of the Bible to choose from, including the ones in my Kindle, as well as the wonderful resource, the Bible Gateway website. So I should probably also thank God that I live in the age of the internet and technology which keeps His word always at my fingertips and the fingertips of people world-wide.

Thank You, Lord God, for always being available to me, for giving me Your word and for granting me no excuses to avoid Your message. Amen 

All my Bibles from around my house, not counting the couple that my husband has or the ones on my Kindle.
Yup, no excuse for me.