My dad told us an interesting story last week about Mr. Alfred Nobel of the Nobel Peace Prize… Seems the writer of his brother’s obituary mistakenly mixed the brothers up and thinking that Alfred was the expired one, he referred to him as the “merchant of death” (for Alfred Nobel invented dynamite which is pretty much the opposite of peace…) So as a result of reading the unkind blast about himself in the newspaper the still living Mr. Nobel decided maybe he ought to take some intentional steps towards leaving a more positive legacy… thus the Nobel Peace Prize came to be.

I found it kind of interesting how peace in that story started with a little dynamite… Then I realized that we can have peace too when we apply some T and T:

Trust + Thankfulness = Peace

There is always a choice to be made- daily, hourly even minute to minute.  Will I pursue that path to peace or will I focus on my faults or the faults of others and keep a long list of complaints? — because complaints are like bunnies you know. You may start with one or two but before you know it they’ve multiplied all over the place… and then you have to feed them and find homes for them and on and on and on….

image via The Graphics Fairy

The path to peace and the antidote to the overpopulation of complaints is thankfulness and trust. Although I made a master list of ideas to cover under this living intentionally umbrella over the 31 days challenge, I hadn’t nailed down today yet. (see I still subscribe to a little randomness even as I’m trying to do things on purpose…) But when I found myself reading Jesus Calling this morning which was about thankfulness and trust followed up by today’s devotion in Journey which ended with thankfulness and trust by the time I got to Matthew 6 (which was part of the entry for 10/3 in the chronological bible) guess what I found there too– yep, thankfulness and trust prevailed again in the form of DON’T WORRY. Well you can’t help but share when God throws out signs like that!

So today I choose to intentionally live out thankfulness: Whoo hoo it’s Friday! I have a friend coming over to “play” (yes you can still do that as an adult…!) and I am super thankful the sickness has left our house and everyone seems to be well.

And today I choose to trust God and focus on the GOOD because ain’t nobody got time for all those bunnies..! 

image via The Graphics Fairy

Happy Weekend Friends!

♥

 To see all my posts for the 31 days challenge click here to get to the home page.