I am grateful for a text message from my daughter on Sunday that said, “Happy Resurrection Day!”

I am grateful for another part of the Easter message on Sunday about our “defining story.”  What or whom we choose to focus our attention, with whom we associate, what fills our mind and thoughts, the shows we watch, the music we listen to, the material we read, our experiences and how we allow those experiences to affect us – it all plays a part in our defining story. Adam spoke of the man who filled his mind with hate and associated with people who also filled their minds with hate, and after so many years, that hate defined this man, until he acted out on the hate and killed three people on Palm Sunday. He didn’t begin life this way. But his story began to change course when he invited hatred/evil/Satan into his daily life.

From now on, brothers and sisters, if anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things: all that is true, all that is holy, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is lovely, and all that is worthy of praise. – Philippians 4:8

I am grateful for memories of Mom’s “Easter Story in an Egg” project that she would always do for her Children’s Church kids and for my girls. She would collect those enormous pantyhose eggs, L’eggs eggs, and fill them with a dime or nickel, a hard piece of bread, a piece of fabric that was ripped, a thorny stick, a nail, two toothpicks tied together to form a cross, a white piece of cloth, a smooth stone, etc., and then she would always want to sit with the girls and teach them the whole Easter story and ask them to tell her what every item meant. I loved this about Mom’s Easter. Part of her defining story… 

I am grateful for the softness of a baby blanket.

I am grateful for the cool, crisp mornings. Too soon they will be warm and sticky.

I am grateful for the invention of cooking spray. It’s a pretty convenient item to have. Especially when needing to coat a bird feeder pole right before leaving for work in the mornings so that the squirrels can have a slide to play on during the day.

I am grateful for the yellow bird that blessed us with its presence on the bird feeder on Saturday. 

This day, I choose to speak thankfulness, not bitterness. I choose to speak blessing, not complaint.

And I am grateful that my church is named “Church of the Resurrection.” I am grateful that I am a part of a group known as “Resurrection people,” followers of Jesus.  I am grateful that my story is daily being re-defined and I am one step closer to Christ-likeness and heaven.

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from His perspective. – Colossians 3:1-2 (The Message)