My friend Carolyn Butler writes of Joseph, “Joseph doesn’t get much press in the Nativity story.
 |
| The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife! |
Mostly he stands in the background on Christmas cards, leaning on a staff and looking down pensively into the manger crib.”
I am thinking today of the scores of ordinary people who have played a role in my life and who, in their ordinariness, have shown me patterns by which I live my life. I started jotting down names and the list quickly grew to 30. … I am so thankful to all of them, especially my mother who gave birth to me on December 17 (today!) in a little rural hospital in Hoxie, Kansas, where I entered the world at a whooping 10 pounds even!
As writer Carolyn says so aptly: “The Old Testament personalities such as Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, Jethro and Jonathan had no way of knowing that thousands of years later their stories would carry impact.”
People impact our life. Some for good; others not so much. But at least for a moment today, take a minute to reflect on the people who have had the most impact on your life for the better. Maybe you need to personally say to them, “Thank you.” You can at very least thank the Lord for them, saying, “Thank you Lord Jesus for the way they have touched my life for good. I am so grateful.”
If you are like me, you probably will find that, as the apostle Paul writes, “not many of them were wise by humans standards, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth.”
For all them in my life, I take a moment of quiet to say, “Thank you.” I am, for sure, standing on the shoulders of too many people to count…
donfollis.com 