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Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2 

Today as I write it is Optimist Day which is celebrated annually the 1st Thursday of February! I think of optimism as faith-centered hopefulness. With so much negativity and difficulties all around us, maintaining optimism is challenging. In order to be optimistic, we need to be grounded in the positive and be intentional about practicing gratitude and embracing hope.  

I invite you to join me in a Gratitude Challenge from motivational speaker, Shawn Achor: Starting Today, for 21 days, spend 2 minutes a day scanning the world for 3 new things you’re grateful for and write them down.  

According to Achor this trains your brain to scan for positives instead of negatives as a way to grow into a more optimistic frame of mind. And what is more faithful than being optimistic as we hang on to hope? We must be in this watchful and thankful faith-frame of mind to dream about future possibilities for our lives and our church. 

Desert Cross inspires optimism with how quickly we met the 500 Hour Project challenge with all the various ways we volunteered and served in the community. A $500 donation will be made for world hunger in gratitude for this service! Congrats, Desert Cross! Good things are still happening every day in small ways that make a big difference. Hang on to the small victories in the midst of the great challenges we face! It starts with Hope + Gratitude = Optimism. 

In honor of Optimism Day, I sent Achor’s book, How to Make a Shark Smile, to my young grandsons as a gesture toward a new and hopeful generation that will practice kindness and gratitude. We can train ourselves and mold our young ones to look to the future with optimistic eyes and hearts as we practice gratitude and teach it to others. 

So please join me today and let’s see if the Gratitude Challenge makes a difference in our lives, so we can make a difference in the world one optimist at a time! 

Make someone smile today, Pastor Andrea