I HEARD A STORY OF someone who asked a man why he was so happy. The man picked up a binder filled with hundreds of handwritten pages and explained, “Every time someone does something kind for me, I write it in this book. And every time I feel very good about something, I write it in this book.”
The questioner said, “I wish I could be as happy as you.”
“If you kept a book like this, you would be.”
“But the book is so big . . . I haven’t had many kind things done for me, and I haven’t felt good very often.”
“I might have thought that too, if I hadn’t recorded them all. I’ve learned to see and remember and be grateful for kindness and happiness when they come. Try it. Every time you doubt, read your entries and you’ll see all you have to be grateful for.”
There are always reasons to be thankful. Matthew Henry, the Puritan preacher and Bible commentator, made this statement after a thief stole his money: “Let me be thankful first because I was never robbed before; second, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”[1]
Randy Alcorn, 60 Days of Happiness: Discover God’s Promise of Relentless Joy (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2017).