Dear God,
Thank you for the gift of marriage.
We ask you to please be the Lord of our marriage. Help us to love you more than each other.
Help us to love You and each other more every day.
Help us to appreciate each other’s gifts, talents, and virtues.
Help us to overlook each other’s faults and forgive each other’s sins.
Amen.
[Jeremiah 29:11, Proverbs 3:5-6]
I don’t understand much,
But I’ve been given a gift —
A gift I didn’t ask for —
Life.
I can’t change my existence,
But what do I do with it?
Yes, it’s a mystery —
My own life history —
And that God has a plan
That I don’t understand.
I don’t understand,
I don’t understand,
I don’t understand …
Plans for my good
And not for harm,
Plans for a future
And a hope.
I must trust in the Lord with all my heart,
And not rely on my own insight.
I must acknowledge Him in all my ways,
And He will make my paths straight.
Do you ever feel like the Drummer Boy?
Nothing to bring to the quiet King.
Nothing to give, except your sin.
Do you ever look inside yourself,
But empty finding, look above.
It’s only there, that there is Love.
And then open your heart to let Him in.
Maybe God wanted to do something nice for me after I had to have a blood
test (does anyone like them?), or He just wanted to delight me somehow,
but when I came out of the medical clinic about 7:30 a.m., this is the sunrise
that He showed me:
Heaven is singing,
The choruses ringing,
Of God’s ever-love
Abiding in lightness,
In darkness, the brightness –
The Spirit, the dove
Gives strength to our weakness;
From pride, giving meekness –
The gift from above
CREATOR’S GIFT
Smelly clothes and dirty dishes
Don’t seem like the stuff of wishes
Cooking meals and wiping noses
Could, in time, produce neuroses
However, if you do your duty
You could find in rhythm, beauty.
The daily things you do with love
May lead your soul to realms above
The simple things, seen with new eyes
May give your heart a great surprise
When seen as the Creator’s gift
A flower, a child, a dirty dish
clarakatalin 
The Gift of Guilt
I once was amazed by a statement in a book by Peter Kreeft (can’t recall which book) that “The Jews gave us the gift of guilt.” In current times, most of us avoid the idea of guilt and find it very negative. To think of guilt as “a gift” was thought-provoking.
Here’s my take on it, but I am not an expert:
1) Guilt is a gift when I have broken one of God’s laws. This might be thought of as the Ten Commandments, or the “two greatest commandments”: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Have I done evil, or have I failed to do the good I had the means to do?
2) It is a gift if I allow the guilt to bring me to repentance.
3) It is a gift if after repenting, I freely accept forgiveness.
Guilt can be a gift like a cancer diagnosis. You did not perhaps know you had cancer until the doctor informed you. Now that you are informed, things can be done to destroy or remove the cancer. The guilt is the impetus, like the awareness following the diagnosis, to take action.
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