From my experience, the gratitude that has been shown to me from various people in my life, were things that I didn’t recognize as really significant, but in some way they did.  When I consider those responses, it affirms that service to others is not measured by what impact we think we are going to make, but just doing the act and letting it speak for itself…(Mark 4:26-27)

When we live a life of trying to measure our impact, we either in arrogance play god in our ability to make things happen, or in equal pride and unbelief, grossly underestimate the Lord and what He is able to do in our obedience to serve…(Ephesians 3:20)

In this passage Jesus is gathering up disciples as He is beginning His ministry.  In the calling of Nathanael, he believed that “nothing good” could come from Nazareth.  So in his unbelief he limits Jesus, and Jesus does “above what he could ever ask or think”, and displays a sign of His all-knowing power, and calls Nathanael anyway…

However Nathanael displays a characteristic of gratitude, that can change how negative we tend to think sometimes about our day/life.  Nathanael is surprised by Jesus seeing him under a fig tree!  This is not a life-changing sign of healing or anything like that.  But Nathanael noticed Jesus love in a detail that changed his whole heart, from unbelief to saving faith!

Being on both sides of being l like Nathanael, I realized that when I see the details that God just blesses me in, there is a joy that is indescribable.  Because it lets me know that Jesus does care about the smallest things I think about and go through.  Much like a child who wonders if you noticed what they did, even more so, the Lord notices the things we didn’t even consider and lets us know that He sees and cares! (Luke 12:24)

In His Love, Ld