November 8th . . . (end of Article #1)

8. Instead of looking at what you don’t have, look at what you do have. Have you ever looked around you and bemoaned how little you have? How the place you live isn’t your dream house, or the car you drive isn’t as nice as you’d like, or your peers have cooler gadgets or better jobs? If so, that’s an opportunity to be grateful for what you already have. It’s easy to forget that there are billions of people worse off than you — who don’t have much in the way of shelter or clothes, who don’t own a car and never will, who don’t own a gadget or even know what one is, who don’t have a job at all or only have very menial, miserable jobs in sweatshop conditions. Compare your life to these people’s lives, and be grateful for the life you have. And realize that it’s already more than enough, that happiness is not a destination — it’s already here.

If you want pictures to go with that comparison, see the people that Damon Young just left (as well as most of the places our missionaries have served). In the world economy we are all living in, all of us are dealing with different circumstances. Some are minor disappointments (not being promoted like we thought we would, not being able to afford the new cool gadget), some are large sacrifices (not being able to give our kids the classes/activities we'd like to be able to), and some are heartbreaking circumstances, (the news of home foreclosures, bankruptcies, reposessions etc. they are everywhere). But even in the worst of the economy that most of us have seen in our lifetimes, we are still infititely better off than a very large population of our world.