1,000 GIFTS!
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God’s gifts are all around us. If we start every day with gratitude to God for His many blessings, it can change our lives. This is true for each of us, as well as the students at New Song.
Seeking to embed gratitude into the hearts of our kids, this semester lead teacher Rachelle Alspaugh decided to challenge them to create a list of 1,000 gifts God has provided, based on Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts.
Though it seemed daunting at first, with the encouragement of Rachelle and our Student Life Assistant, Julie Decker, the kids reached 1,000 on May 11th! The students’ list included Jesus, bible characters, parents, cartoons, s'mores, various states and countries, video games, coffee to keep teachers awake, and of course, McDonald's!
The students also mentioned different things that can be readily seen on the New Song campus, which is filled with a vast variety of trees, flowers, plants, birds, and other animals (including bobcats, a rather large one of which we recently got a picture of on a trail camera!) We are grateful that here on campus the children get to see first-hand some of the richness of God’s creation.
We hope that this daily practice has instilled in our students a habit to always look for signs of God's blessings. We are thankful that fifth-grade Kayden has grown in his understanding of this, as he recently (and so very astutely!) observed that “Everything we think of for our list is coming from God.” How true, Kayden, for “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…” (James 1:17)