For March 16th:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God.”

Philippians 4:6

On February 3,2013 in our Living a Life of Gratitude Devotional book, it was suggested for a Valentine 's Day gift we make a box and place in it our praises. When I shared the idea of having a Gratitude Box with my family they were all for it. We called it our Prayer and Praise Box. We already had the perfect size box, it was a red soft fabric and was in the shape of a Heart.

My Mandy got busy cutting all of us strips of paper. We wrote down prayer request and those things that we were grateful for. Mandy was also our encourager. If we did not put enough strips in our box, she wrote out scriptures for us and thank you's and prayer request for us.

On February the 14^th we opened our box and each of us selected a strip of paper. We were not prepared for what came next. We never imagined the happiness that was going to come from that little box. The happiness and the laughter at our table when we read those strips of paper and saw our awesome God at work in our lives.. One of the prayer request was “I pray my Dad gets the new job”. He has been working at the new job for 2 weeks. Another was “I pray we get a new home.” The girls moved back with their parents in their new home this weekend. Another was ”Father, I thank you for my precious grand girls and for the Blessing of having them with us this month.” The one that really made me smile was the one that said “CHEESE”. My cheese loving Mandy was grateful for her cheese. We all agreed on how Thankful we were for all things..

There were more and I felt like the Grinch that stole Christmas, that my heart grew 10 sizes larger as we read on.

Prayer: Father, we thank you that even those little strips of paper contain prayers that go straight to you.

Ginnie McPherson