A thankful heart

Everyday at work I am encouraged and challenged by the way my patients handle the adversity in their lives. One of  my recent patient's was an evangelist and he was in inpatient rehab for a pretty serious stroke. We worked together everyday on re-learning to walk and he would frequently be singing hymns and quoting scriptures throughout the whole treatment session. It would be hard to get him to talk about anything other than God. For example, if I would ask him if he had any visitors the night before he would say "Well I was visited by the Spirit of God..." This man loved the Lord and he told everyone he met on the rehab floor.
It was such a unique experience when this patient was asked to speak for 5 minutes at the weekly worship service on the rehab floor. He had been working with the speech therapist during his whole rehab stay in order to improve his speech problems from the stroke. For weeks he worked on perfecting the message that he was going to share. When the actual worship service happened I went to listen and since then I haven't stopped thinking about the experience. I don't think I will ever be able to forget what occured that afternoon in the rehab gym.
The room was packed and you could tell everyone was excited to hear their fellow peer talk. Now I have always heard about churches where everyone is shouting "Hallelujuah" and singing out "Amen" during the sermon but I had never experienced one before. It was almost a surreal experience because there were a handfull of individuals all saying things at the same time the man was speaking. And when this gentleman started talking he didn't stop- his 5 minute message quickly turned into 15 minutes. But the crazy thing was that it didn't matter. It was so neat to see the joy that filled him when he was able to speak in front of people like he used to. It was so wonderful to see the way all the other patients looked at him with thirst in their eyes for what he was going to share. But the BEST thing was what he said. He started out by sharing the verse from Psalm 150:6 "Let everyhting that has breath praise the Lord." and then after that he quoted over 20 other passages that talked about giving thanks. I was just shocked. Here's this man who had just undergone a massive stroke and he's giving thanks to the Lord and telling all his peers who had also undergone serious injuries to do the same thing.
I stood there thinking "How can you give thanks when you're in that hard of a situation? And Why don't I give thanks like this?" I haven't been through anything comparable to what they have been through and I still don't even praise the Lord with every breath. So it just hit me. And it hit me hard. I'm going to start giving thanks like those patients did in the rehab gym that afternoon. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm going to start shouting out "Praise Jesus" and "Preach it Preacher" during church now or anything but I am saying that I want to give thanks for all things, during all times, and in all circumstances. I want to let every breath I breathe praise the Lord.
How beautiful would it be if we could all live like that? I felt like I got a brief glimpse of how beautiful it would be in the rehab gym that afternoon. And for that experience I am THANKFUL.

"give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thes. 5:18