Yesterday I received an early Christmas gift, those of you who know me well know I opened it yesterday too. You would be incredibly surprised to know though that I really debated not opening it, but placing it under the tree until Christmas.

But I didn’t do that.

This gift means I may never drink coffee anyplace other than my own home.

I’ve been a coffee lover now far longer than I wasn’t. I’ve been consuming it since I was the tender age of 18. At first I drank a little coffee with my cream and sugar. Now I prefer it “blacker than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp.”

And that, my friends, is very dark, very dark indeed.

The coffee brews incredibly smooth and goes down easy. I drink more water than I drink coffee, but this coffee maker could change all that. With this machine, I’m betting I could drink coffee all day long and forget about water.

This morning I was again reading in One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. She is talking about trust in the chapter I’m on..slowing plowing my way through. (I actually should say I’m plodding my way through.) I’m not going to lie, I have some pretty hefty trust issues.

I do. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.

Too many times though we count the hard things of life, those things that happen to cause us to think we need to have hefty trust issues–struggles we’ve gone through, tragedies we’ve encountered, abuses we’ve suffered, and asked “Why should I trust in God? Why should I rely on Him? What has He ever done for me? What has He done for me lately?”

But that focus is wrong.

It’s not the bad things that should change our focus. It’s not the bad things we should look on as a reason to trust.

Our focus must be on the blessings:

• the sun coming up…again,
• the heart that continues to beat,
• the lungs that still fill with oxygen,
• grace that is still heaped upon grace,
• His great mercy that we are not condemned,

When we wake up again to hope, hope that today is a better day–that is why are to trust Him

I choose my focus.

Focus on the bad, and all of life is terrible. God is mean and untrustworthy. An old curmudgeon. A killjoy. Not worth my time or my breath or my effort.

BUT:

Focus on the minute by minute, second by second gifts He freely gives and we have a reason to hope, a reason to trust.

Life’s hard things, it’s rocks and stones we all have thrown at us, those things don’t negate the goodness and the blessings of God.

No, my hard-hearted disbelief in His goodness does.