Gratitude – “The Memory of the Heart”
By Roger Kuhn
A young bride from New Jersey joined her husband at a U.S. Army base on the edge of the desert in California. Living conditions for this “city girl” were primitive. The heat was unbearable. The wind blew constantly. Sand blew into everything in their tiny house. The days were long, hot, and boring. When her husband went farther into the desert for two weeks of maneuvers, loneliness and the horrible living conditions got the best of her. She thought about her sorry state constantly and complained regularly to her mother back East.
One day she got a letter from her mother which included this line:
“Two men looked through prison doors; one saw mud, and the other saw stars.”
She read the line over and over, and she began to realize that her attitude was based on what she was looking at and talking about. She decided to think about the Lord’s purpose in her being there. (She was a Christian filled with negative thoughts and attitudes up to this point – quite naturally in her daily living situation.)
She started to reach out and make friends with the Indians. She learned about their culture, their history – everything about them, in fact. She began to study the desert, and it changed!
From a forbidding place, the desert became a place of amazing beauty in her eyes. Over time she became an expert on the Indians of the area and the desert. She later wrote a book about it all.
What changed? The heat, wind, sand, desert, and Indians? No. She became a positive person as she realized she could choose what she would focus on in her present circumstances.
“Blessed is the person who has learned to deal with the hurts and disappointments of life so that there is not a build up of rotten emotions ruining her life and everyone’s around her.” Each of us can choose what we rehearse in our minds and in our conversations. Christ in you wants to lead you to develop genuine gratitude – “the memory of the heart.”
