When we are grateful, we are most fully alive.*
(Erwin McManus)

Every day, we’re able to lay up treasure in our hearts that we’ll have when, some day, it is needed, perhaps for others, perhaps for ourselves.

It is the kind of treasure that helps us face the most difficult things in life that external treasures never will.  When we bring these out then perhaps, in the words of Iris Murdoch, we are providing something sacred:

‘A sacrament provides an external visible place for an internal invisible act of the spirit.’**

Treasure is everywhere in what we often think of as the ordinary and John O’Donohue’s words gently offer how we can be open to receive it:

‘I place on the altar of the dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.’^

This treasure does not remain inactive and cold within us waiting for the day of need, though, it also makes it possible to be open to even more each new day and in this we are being changed:

‘May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.’^
(John O’Donohue)

(*From Erwin McManus’ Uprising.)
(**From Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: A Morning Offering.)