It’s often easy to downplay what we have to be thankful for in our lives, and focus primarily on what is lacking. We get so caught up in getting more…becoming popular, funnier, healthier, wealthier; that we don’t express heartfelt gratitude for what we currently have.

While I want to be more popular…
I am eternally grateful for the friendships I have.

While I want to be funnier…
I am grateful for the humor I find in my life.

While I want to be healthier…
I am thankful for my current health.

While I want to be wealthier…
I am grateful for my current wealth.

When we acknowledge what we want, it’s important to always make sure to acknowledge what we already have. Cultivate the habit of unceasingly expressing attitudes of gratitude daily. Celebrate your life. Laugh at the daily misfortunes. Smile & take joy in the little successes. Accept the good. Not only when you fulfil one of your desires, but because of what you already have.

It’s okay to want & desire more. It’s only harmful when you do so at the expense of thumbing your nose at what you already have.

If you take a regular inventory of your life and what you have to be grateful for, you will discover a multitude of gifts and talents you have ignored. You will uncover the many blessings already in your life… and you will see that the hand God dealt you is a winning hand.

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a
canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had
rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn’t look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag
out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the
clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it
cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each
contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels
in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the
clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of
thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of
thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It’s like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we
see the external clay vessel. It doesn’t look like much from the outside. It
isn’t always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish
or well known or wealthy But we have not taken the time to find the treasure
hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the time to get to know
that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them,
then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine
forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown
away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.
May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

Sometimes your eyes can deceive you. Like a magician performing their latest magic trick, a new eMail program has arrived on the scene that is not what it seems. Folks are getting tricked into joining this eMail blocker called Boxbe without realizing what they are getting into.

People are receiving notices after they send someone an eMail that their message cannot be delivered because they are not a member of the recipient’s “group”.

The message looks like an attempt to verify you as a real sender, but it is really an under-handed trick to get you to join Boxbe.

“Boxbe” is a clever list builder which forces people to join the list. It is marketed as an inbox-cleaner/spam-blocker.

When you join, everyone who tries to send you a message are informed that they must join Boxbe in order to get their message delivered to you.

This may seem like a good idea, but do you really want people to have to jump through hoops to contact you?

Not if you’re in business or want to stay connected, you don’t!

Plus, you won’t receive valuable newsletters & broadcasts that you’ve subscribed to. (Auto-responders and mass-mailers do not join Boxbe!)

The easiest way to deal with spam is the delete button. You can mass-select spam and hit delete once – and it’s all gone!

Again, Boxbe is a very clever list builder – but it’s not your list, it’s Boxbe’s.

You can bet that they’ll sell that list once it’s huge enough and they’ll sell it to Boxbe members.

Then a new breed of spam will be born – Boxbe spam!

If you’ve been considering joining Boxbe, don’t! If you joined Boxbe, go to their site and opt-out.

If you can’t opt-out, then you’ll need a new eMail address (get one free at Google) – and re-subscribe to all your lists.

Don’t fall for this magician’s sleight of hand!