A few days ago I was sitting in the pool and looking at everything around me. The thought came to me “You can’t be present without being thankful, and you can’t be thankful without being present.” They are inseparable and interdependent, “two sides of the same coin.”

If I can’t express gratitude and thankfulness for everything in the now, in the present— I can’t be present. If I can’t be thankful for every present thing in my present life and moment—I can’t be fully present to God, His present Presence. My heart can’t receive Gods grace and love and mercy, fully in the present. My now, “daily bread.”

If I am in thankfulness, I am in love, the frequency of His Presence. Thankfulness is the realm of God consciousness, the beginning toward the inner courts of God. But if I am anxious and in fear, I am most likely not in a posture and heart-attitude of thankfulness and gratitude. “Be anxious for nothing… but in prayer AND thanksgiving…” Thankfulness is the power to keep fear, bitterness, and anxiousness—at a distance.

Thankfulness is the gateway to a heart and life cultivating Presence and being present. It cultivates being present with God, others and ourselves. Thankfulness can even be a tool to weed out distractions and overstimulation. Thankfulness can drive out restlessness. Thankfulness helps us live fully in the NOW.

We can cultivate being fully present by: thankfulness, simplicity, minimalism, stillness and silence.

Be still, and know… Be still and know God, in the now, in the present.

— Kevin