Define.

   I lay in a bed. My sheets and linens are white. The room is white but it's shadowed, not dark but dim. Sitting next to me is an old woman I've never seen before. She's asking me questions. I'm not in pain and I'm not old but I'm pretty sure I may be on my death bed. She asks me something else, "What are you?" I respond, 

"I am a Gratitude." - I wake up.

   I heard of a study where a man's DNA was placed in a petri dish. The man was then hooked up to a computer to do various testing. His petri dish of DNA was then taken into a different room and hooked up to a different computer to see if the DNA would respond to the tests being done on the man. Even though it had been removed from his body his DNA responded in perfect sync with him as they tested the man. Each time the tests were run they moved the dish further away. They had no change in results up to four miles away.

   We believe we all come from Adam. That means somewhere in our complex systems we all share threads of common DNA. In theory everything we do, everything we go through, all the various emotions we have, if even in a minute way, affect every one around us. That is dumb-founding when you consider the compounding affects it would have as people come and go from one place to another. They are passing along the affects you had on them as they go.

    I went for a walk today thinking about the dream I had. It was such an odd statement - "I am a Gratitude." What does it mean to not just be grateful but to become gratefulness incarnate? To not just feel the emotion of gratitude but instead be the very essence of it.  I am gratitude. Yet, that isn't really what I said, not completely. I said I am (a) gratitude, as if there could be more than one, as if I was not an essence but rather a thing.

Consider these definitions:

Hope: the confident expectation of good to come. (not the same as the word wish we often exchange it with.)

The Glory of God: The view and opinion of God.

Humility in reference to God: To cease believing what you believe about yourself and instead believe the glory of God, his view and opinion of you.

   We believe that the Kingdom of God is now. That every promise Christ qualified for is given to us now, here on this earth. We hope (or confidently expect) that as we press into our God the reality of His Kingdom will come from inside us overflowing into our daily lives. We believe that we can throw away our old man (our views and doubts) and replace them with a new man who stands firm in Christ bathed in the view and opinion of God. (His Glory)

   The word says that when Christ redeemed man that God counted it as a gain. The God who never changes, the God that has not a shadow of turning was added to by the redemption of man. That's a doozy of a paradox. It certainly makes me reconsider God's view and opinion of us. The Bible also says that God dances over us with song, that he daily gives us good for our lives, that he scourers the earth in pursuit of us. We are loved.

   All this thinking leads me to understand what it means to be a Gratitude. I can heap all of my self doubt, all my fears, sickness, poverty, hatred, sorrows, and my every affliction on the floor and just walk away from them. I can hold onto a promise secured in Christ that I live in the Kingdom now. That God is ravenously in love with me. That every day every good thing I need to succeed in every thing that I do is mine. All ready given to me. I need not listen to the voices in my head or pay any attention to the condemnation of sin. I don't believe anything but the hope of good things to come. For this I am so deeply grateful.

   I will ponder these things. I will meditate on this. I will make this my focus. I will receive all the Spirit has for me. I will become a point in this universe in which all that is brought to me is filtered through the Glory of God. I will take in all that comes to me in my four mile circle and every where I go I will funnel it through the Hope of God.  I will bathe it in the realities of the Kingdom and then send it right back out to everyone around me.

A Gratitude: A being capable of filtering all it receives until it reflects the view and opinion of the loving Father.

I am a Gratitude.  - Latsum