Magnify the good

O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. Psalms 34:3

I love going to chapel on Monday morning at my son’s school. During chapel there is an opportunity for teachers and students to “magnify the good” by acknowledging something helpful that another student or teacher did. Students and teachers do a little cheer for that person.

It shows me the value of magnifying the good we see around us, which allows it to become bigger in our thinking.

After a period of feeling fear and doubt, I decided to give gratitude more diligently as a way to “magnify the good”. I have found that a gratitude app really helps me stay on top of this practice. Taking moments to fill my thought with an acknowledgement of good breaks the spell of lack, want, or depression. It gives a keen sense of God’s love, beauty, and goodness.

Gratitude enables us to feel peaceful and joyful! Gratitude has a healing effect.

So magnify the good! Notice the good around you, even the small things. Being aware of God’s presence can fill your consciousness with courage, hope, freedom, and possibilities.

A grateful heart a garden is,
Where there is always room
For every lovely, Godlike grace
To come to perfect bloom….
A grateful heart a temple is,
A shrine so pure and white,
Where angels of His presence keep
Calm watch by day or night.
(Christian Science Hymn 3)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.—Mother Teresa

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Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. —John Muir

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Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Repost: Deserts of the Heart

A beautiful, refreshing post. Thanks, John, for writing these ideas. 

“But what if rejoicing is the rain your life needs, in order to see the beauty bloom?”

Once you’ve lived in the desert for any stretch of time, you regard every blade of green grass and every leafy tree as some sort of small miracle. Explain to me all you like about weather patterns and geography but it will never take away my wonder at seeing fresh green grass and flowering dogwood trees…

Source: Deserts of the Heart – Read More