If you cannot make the entire world happy and enlivened, perhaps you can make a part of the world happy and enlivened. Perhaps you can make your part of the world sweeter. It is such a little thing for you to make someone else's day happier. Just as you go about your business and lead your everyday life, you can shine on someone else's day. Just by a few words, a smile, a sense of appreciation for life and for another's voyage through life, you can lift the hearts of many.

The Earth is your garden. I look to you to take care of it. Take care of it well.

Just as with people, you do not use them without also giving to them, the Earth is not to be taken for granted. True, you tread on the Earth every day, and the Earth doesn't complain.

By the same token, you read about the world, and you think about it, and experience it and observe it, and often you grumble about it, yet the world is your garden. Sometimes it is overgrown and filled with brambles, and yet it is your world. It is the house you live in. It is My garden.

Imagine you are walking on a beach, and the sand squeezes between your toes. To the right is the ocean blue. To the left are people and hot dog stands, and further beyond to the left are condos, and a whole world out there that extends to another ocean and beyond. The world is vast. Vaster yet are the skies above.

Where do you cast your eyes? On what is your focus?

You can love it all. Okay, the sun may get too hot on your back, yet here is an ocean right there for you to cool off in.

The world is your apple. It is yours. It is for you. It was made for you. Accept graciously.

The world is an inn you stop at for a little while on your journey. The inn may not have all the amenities you would have liked, yet still it is an inn, and it gives you a bed and shelter and a window to look out from. Enjoy your stay.

There has been a tendency for My children to find it easier to see fault rather than blessing, easier to complain rather than appreciate. Why is this? It is a habit, beloveds, nothing more than any other needless habit you may have.

How are you today? Have you changed your mind about anything? Have you opened your heart further recently? Have you gone to work by a different route? What happiness did you give to someone today that also brought you happiness? What are you going to do right now, and how do you feel about it?

If you are going to do something right now, or are in the middle of something right now that does not make your heart bounce for joy, what new approach can you take that will make your heart bounce?

Your sense of gratitude toward Me is your awareness of My gratitude for you.

You do not have to be grateful. Gratitude is not an assignment you fulfill. As you come closer to Me, you feel more of My gratitude for Creation. You experience My gratitude and call it yours.

Of course, the closer you come to Me in your awareness, the closer I come to you in your awareness. Who is it Who seems to come closer, you or I?

Sometimes you have seen gratitude as an embarrassingly humble position, an emotional outbreak where you happily and luckily have received an undeserved bounty, as if you were not deserving, that somehow a great gift fell on you, and in the same breath as your gratitude, you entreat. On your knees, you ask for more of the same. Sort of a double-handed gratitude. "Thanks and keep giving to me, unworthy as I am."

As you learn to appreciate, your appreciation grows. Appreciation needs to grow. Discernment is not better than appreciation.

Begin with appreciating your life. That you have it, that it was given to you, that you are the holder of it. You were given a beautiful musical instrument with many chords, and you are learning how to play the high notes. To do this, first it is necessary to appreciate sound.

How beautiful is one petal from a tree! How beautiful is one tree. How beautiful is one Human Being. Oh, the beauty! A Human Being is a delightful sight. Think a moment of what it is to have a Human Being before you. It is like having the Kohinoor diamond. The only thing is that when you have the diamond in front of you, alas, you are often in ignorance of the value. That must be what purgatory is, beloveds — to have a treasure and not know its true value. Imagine thinking that a diamond is a bauble! Imagine thinking that the Kohinoor diamond is glass!

I say, "I AM." I say, "I am right here." I say, "I am always right here." I say, "You have Me always, beloveds."

Beloveds, you live in many worlds. It doesn't matter where your body is, and it doesn't matter where your mind is. I am totally absolutely right here with you. I am as near to you as your breath. We are so vital and vibrant to each other. We are the same breath. Who breathes your lungs in and out, you or I? Who can separate Us? Neither you nor I.