Thank you Jesus for this Pizza or Little Blessings

Last night, driving home from a special dinner with my dad, I literally praised and thanked Jesus for the blessing of such a wonderful meal, specifically for the pizza.

By Lauren Heaton
March 17, 2017

Have you ever truly praised Jesus for pizza?

Now, I understand that is an odd question to begin with. I am sure many of us have said that we love pizza, or we’ve enjoyed the taste of goooood pizza, or maybe even have jokingly said, “Thank you, sweet Jesus, for this pizza.”

But that still is not what I am talking about. Last night, driving home from a special dinner with my dad, I literally praised and thanked Jesus for the blessing of such a wonderful meal, specifically for the pizza. You see as someone who is gluten free, dairy free, and avoids tomato sauce for similar reasons, pizza is not usually an option. However, on occasion restaurants offer gluten-free, cheese-free pizza with pesto instead of red sauce (stay with me, I promise it’s delicious) and those occasions are truly special. It only seemed right to praise God for this blessing of pizza after months of not having it.

I think that God loves to shower little gifts like that upon us, His children. The bible even says so, I mean it talks about rocks and fish, not pizza, but it is still in there! (See Matthew 7:11). How often do we thank Him for these little gifts? Probably not as often as we should.

It is often said that it is easy to praise Jesus while life is good, and consequently not so easy when life is rough. We fall prey to negative thinking, counting our miseries instead of our blessings. We focus on all of our shortcomings instead of the ways God worked through us in a single day’s time. With the help and beauty of God’s unfailing grace, we can flip this negativity on its head and praise God for His “little blessings.”

I call it the Sticky Note Challenge, where every day around the same time I write down one specific thing I am thankful for from that day. This simple task forces me to exit the negative, circular thought train and look for the ways that God has loved me that day. The physical act of writing a mini thank you note to God is especially important because the partnering of calling to mind a blessing and hand writing it out really gets your brain to switch gears.

You may find that this new-found “Attitude of Gratitude” gives you the peace you were praying for all day long and the strength to continue loving those around you during those terrible-awful-no-good-very-bad-days that happen to all of us. By continuously looking for the little ways God loves us, we train ourselves to keep our eyes fixed on Him, in good times and in bad.

Take note of a beautiful sunrise on your morning commute, a calm spring breeze as you walk your kiddos home from school, or even a really good slice of pizza.

Then take the time to thank Him for it.

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Photo Credit: Lauren Heaton, all rights reserved, used with permission.