BEACON STORY
The Reason For The Season?
RADICAL GRATITUDE
BY REV. LOH SOON CHOY
T his is the Season to express and reflect on our gratitude and thanksgiving to God as we celebrate Christmas, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new, and soon, the Chinese New Year.
Gratitude has great power, as a dear friend recently experienced after journaling the countless things he could be grateful to God for. His intensive devotional exercise surprised and blessed him much, and I was impacted by his many articles he sent online. His was the deep and radical Gratitude to God for all things at all times, not just as ' a reason for the season ' at Christmas or the New Year.
I used to journal regularly – my prayers, reflections and gratitude to God, ' counting my blessings and naming them one by one’.
Now at 78 + and with health problems, I still sometimes journal my gratitude to God in my diary, my iPad and note books. But I have found it more natural to spontaneously and continuously say and sing my“ Thank You” to God from morning to night like a child or a man gone crazy on items from A to Z( as my wife can testify). Most of His many blessings could not have been planned as we were just taught to serve and live by faith – not even in matters with regard to our retirement years!
THANKFUL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES My health comes into the picture because I’ ve had two angioplasties, several mild heart attacks that led to an open heart surgery, and an early prostate cancer that ended with two doses of chemotherapy and a surgery. For six years since then, I’ ve had bone osteoporosis, mild joint osteoarthritis and an uncommon kind of rheumatoid arthritis( RA) – an incurable auto-immune, inflammatory disease that attacks the outer layers of the soft
tissues of my nerves, brain, eyes, skin, and the inner linings of my stomach, intestines and colon.
Throw in chronic constipation, mild insomnia, daily RA attacks that set my body on fire, and painful irritable bowel syndrome that demands some dozen over visits to the toilet daily( a renowned gastrointestinal specialist has been treating this unsuccessfully for several months following an endoscopy and colonoscopy).
Surprisingly, I feel grateful to God our Great Physician for these ' sicknesses ' because I see them as His love gifts, like the great Apostle Paul ' s " thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure ". Instead of God ' s healing for which he prayed, God gave him something better: " My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness!"( 2 Cor. 12:7-9).
My so far incurable " thorn( s) in the flesh " also keep me focused on God ' s priorities, including writing a book as
6 ASIAN BEACON 48 # 1 December 2016- January 2017