"Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an “accident,” but a divine choice. It is important to realize how often we have had chances to be grateful and have not used them. When someone is kind to us, when an event turns out well, when a problem is solved, a relationship restored, a wound healed, there are very concrete reasons to offer thanks: be it with words, with flowers, with a letter, a card, a phone call, or just a gesture of affection. . . . Every time we decide to be grateful it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love." (Henri Nouwen)

One of the areas we may fail the most is in gratitude. As human beings we take for granted the many blessings we receive daily from God. It is not that we are deliberately ungrateful. Rather it is a matter of being inattentive and unconsciously responsive to those gifts of grace.  Every second is a gift. Every breath I take is a gift. What would happened if we begin to be more attentive to these undeserved blessings of daily life? Will our life become more in tune to the voice of God within us, guiding us to his eternal presence? Before going to bed tonight, take a few minutes to give thanks to God for those times and events of our day that were his gifts to us, for those we didn't say thanks at the moment.