Saying Grace

Isn't it odd that we only say grace at meals?

For many years now I've tried to say grace, literally, at many other points throughout the day.

When I awaken in a warm home, and the light comes on when I press the switch -

When hot water comes out of the bathroom tap -

When my animals run to me to be held and cuddled and fed and loved and fuzzed and smooched and played with -

When I smell and taste that first unspeakably magnificent cup of COFFEE...

When I lift clean clothing from the hanger or the shelf, and marvel at the color and weave, the softness, the warmth [in winter] or the comfort [in summer] of the fabric.

Give thanks to God for the people who built the power plant, strung the wires or threaded the cable, tend the generators and power substations. Who climb the towers and hang the insulators and risk their lives in bucket trucks repairing pole transformers in thunderstorms...

Give praise for the people who invented the water heater and indoor plumbing... who build houses and wire and plumb them, who make the drywall and the pipes and fittings and wires...

Thank God for 'shapely, wholesome cats'... and warmth and fur and purring, and hands to pet with and ears to hear with...

Thank Him for coffee bushes and the people who tend them and pick the berries, and roast them and pack them and ship them... the people who pilot the freighters and trucks, who run the plants, who make the coffee cans[!]... and fill them and seal them and load them, and drive them away, and take them out again, and place them on the shelves, that we may take them home.

Praise Him for the pickers and shearers, and spinners and weavers, and dyers and cutters and seamstresses and tailors... and packers and shippers, again and again...

For the farmers and the farmed, for the gleaners and the gleaned. For carpenters and cabinetmakers and mattresses and light bulbs, for bottles of milk and cups of tea.

Praise and bless and cherish each and every part of these wonders. We live, unaware, amid a procession of miracles, and everything we touch and hold and eat and wear and prize and admire and love traces back and back, through time and space and innumerable human hands, to incredible beginnings in amazing places.

Blessed be He!