Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
—Psalm 107:1
If you’re old enough to remember Roman Holiday, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or My Fair Lady, you were enchanted by Audrey Hepburn.
Audrey’s backstory was painfully different than her on-screen charm. In her childhood in war-ravaged Europe, she witnessed hunger, cruelty, and death.
In an interview in 1951, Hepburn recalled her seven-years-earlier Christmas. The Nazis had blocked the food supply, and on December 24, Audrey and her mother didn’t have a scrap of food in their house.
The next day—in what she called “the Christmas miracle”—members of the resistance movement brought them ten potatoes. Audrey said it was “the most wonderful and most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
I relate this story not to induce guilt but to engender gratitude for where we are and what we have this Christmas.
What you have is God’s gift to you.
Gratitude for it is your gift to God.