WEDNESDAY WEEKLY WORD ... thinking of you!

When a young couple first falls in love, being thoughtful was something that just came naturally. Do you remember your first love? You spent hours dreaming of what your loved one looked like, you wondered what they were doing and you dreamed of all the right things to say next time you saw them. No matter what you found yourself doing, you could not stop thinking about your true love!

I was thinking about this whole courtship stage that many couples go thru. At some point in marriage does this "thoughtfulness" leave the relationship? Is it just shortly after they are married or is it a slow process? In some marriages, the sparks of romance slowly burn into grey embers as couples get busy with careers, friends, stress and personal desires. It doesn't take too long for the constant thinking of the other to become a mere inconvenience.

This process does not just happen in marriage...but in all of our relationships. When we take the focus off of others and place our attention on ourselves and our needs, it is easy to avoid being thoughtful to others. Its not an intentional thing that happens...just something that does happen.

Loving someone is going to require many things, but one thing that is neccesary is thoughtfulness. When is the last time someone was thoughtful to you? Gave you a compliment, or bought you lunch, or sent you flowers just because, or wrote you an encouraging note. In last weeks YOUR OPINION MATTERS, I polled the readers the following, "Who has been the most thoughtful to you this week?" The top 3 answers were:

1. 55% of those voting said that their spouse has been the most thoughtful.
2. 20% voted and said that a friend has been thoughtful.
3. And 12% responded and said that their children have been the most thoughtful.

In this weeks poll, there were also 4% that responded that nobody had been thoughtful to them. I wonder how many people we have come in contact with this week could say that about us?

PSALM 139:17-18 "How precious also are Your thoughts to me...How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand."

It might blow your mind, even in the midst of feeling like nobody thinks about you in a day, that God is always thinking of you. This passage in Psalms reminds me that He thinks about me more often than the amount of grains of sand. That is incredible!

When was the last time you thought of someone that many times, if ever? How many times have you thought of God that many times? It is my prayer that I will get back to the "courting stage" in my relationships and show my love to others by expressing how much I am thinking of them!