Giving Him All the Crap and None of the Glory... Jason and Thankfulness.

List of Thank You:

Thank you Leonard for letting me sleep on your couch for two weeks. Enjoy the Rogue Ale.

Thank you Wilbur and Shirley for a home... not just a house to sleep in. Oh, and for the flexible payment dates, and for putting up with my messiness, and getting home late, and a whole other list of things I'm sure are annoying about me.

Thank you Larry for work, for paying me way more than necessary, and for making up work when there was none left for me.

Thank you Jordan, Steph, Mindy, Kyle, all you people who gave me lots of things to laugh about and lots of things to be grateful for in the middle of some tough times.

Thank you Chris and Preston for being so gracious with the cold hard cash.

Thank you Jim and Hope for looking for jobs for me, for letting me borrow the clothes to go try to get jobs, for being motivated for me when I had none left.

Thank you Courtney for making me feel like I was still a man, and that I was still worth something, and just because I could not get a job did not mean that I was incompetent. Oh, and for the emotional wellness days. You have been an Oasis in turmoil.

So what about God? It's easy for me to complain to him, cry out to Him, wonder what He's doing when things go bad. Now that things have taken a slight upturn I wonder what's wrong with me. I have to strain to find things to be thankful for? I can easily attribute the change to people, or events. I know, He is the one orchestrating things. I'm sure when this is all over we can talk about it and He'll explain the whole thing to me, and I'll see how much He cares. I just have a hard time pinning things on God that go good cause I don't get to see what He's doing behind the scenes.

I'm going to butcher this; but there's some quote that says "You may be the only Jesus they see." Well people have been the only Jesus that I've seen. He unfortunately doesn't manifest His physical presence in the person of Jesus in my living room on a daily, yearly, decade, or century basis. He does graciously make himself known through the compassion and generosity of my friends, through acts of love, through scandalous grace that gives to a guy who commonly mishandles his finances... even in times of crisis... So my thank you's are to Him; His manifested presence in the church, his body.