The Poly-Perk Incident

This is a story about thankfulness , gratefulness and gratitude.

As much as my husband David was world renowned for his gratefulness, I was known for my “measured” thank you’s, meted out in proportion to how happy I was with the “gift.” My worst moment was one of my birthday celebrations which prophetically fell on Thanksgiving that year, when the whole family collaborated to get me a Poly Perk coffee maker! It was presented with
great fanfare and cheer, and I totally hated it, evidenced by my repeated question, “why would you ever get me THAT?”

I would love to tell you that was a life lesson! However it wasn’t until years later – when I “totally hated” the colored glass goblets my husband hurriedly bought me one birthday – that I realized that rejecting the gift is rejecting the giver. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ says ‘thank you’ to us in the midst of all our brokenness and incompleteness. He doesn’t look at what percent of our good deeds were for Him, and what percent were for ourselves! He doesn’t look at how perfect, whole, and healed we were when we were busy working on the job He gave us, or even how much thought we put into our decision to answer His call in the first place!  Yet his gratitude to us heals our broken pieces and tangled spaces. His gratitude to us is a healing balm.