A Grateful Practice
Gratitude. There’s a refreshment that comes over me when I say that word. The act of being grateful for something or someone runs much deeper than I think we give it credit for. Namely, because there is a vulnerability piece to gratefulness that’s integral to the practice. True thanksgiving requires specificity.
We say “thank you” all the time in our daily life. And this is a form of gratitude albeit shown in its most shallow form. Then there is thanking someone for something specific. This requires an acknowledgement of the other’s actions and a recognition of the way in which those actions met you in a specific way. This form of gratitude waters deeper places.
There are many practices to grow in thankfulness. Write down three things your thankful for every morning. Any time you’re mad or upset, stop, and think about something you’re thankful for. Write a thank you letter to a friend. The list goes on. But what’s the point, why is gratitude so important?
Thankfulness is a direct combative to negative emotions such as anxiety, jealousy, and envy – to name a few. “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and think Him for all He has done” (Philippians 4:6). “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart” (Colossians 4:2). And one more, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
The list goes on and on, but there are a few Biblical calls to thanksgiving. There is something about gratitude that is part of God’s will or His intended way for us to live. Thankfulness can actually turn our minds away from dwelling on the worry around what we don’t have and serve as a reminder for what we do have and what’s already been given to us.
The last verse from 1 Thessalonians is convicting for me, “in all circumstances.” Regardless of where you find yourself in life, there is always a reason to be thankful. Stick with me here, and I feel this too even in writing these words, I’m not saying that thankfulness makes hard things easy or bad things good. But there’s a quality of gratitude that can function like water on parched ground. It soothes and softens and begins to restore.
Thanksgiving produces these things because in order for it to be practiced we have to shift our perspective away from us and out towards others. Gratitude really is a practice in selflessness. To its core, gratitude is the seeing and pointing to a positive or uplifting quality in someone or something else. The only way we are able to practice this is by taking our eyes off of ourselves.
There’s a Biblical charge to being thankful. There are also seasons in our life when the list comes easy and there are others where gratitude can feel elusive. It’s to those in the second season I want to say a word to. My intention is not to downplay your circumstance. I want to speak straight into it. The encouragement is this – scroll out just a tad. When gratitude seems hard, it is generally a product of us being ultra-zoomed in on a specific issue. You get cut off on the freeway and you can feel the temperature rising inside, it’s hard to be thankful here. But zoom out for a moment and you’ll see the fact that you’re in a car driving safely at 65, ok maybe 70, MPH to a destination 40 miles away is something to be thankful for.
Friend, I know the holidays bring up many things for many people. Wherever you find yourself today, and especially if you find gratitude a challenge, practice zooming out and widening your perspective. As believers, we have a hope in Christ that leads us to confident expectation in what’s to come – this is true regardless of how great or terrible you find your present circumstance to be. Let’s use this Thanksgiving as a collective reminder to practice gratitude not just on an afternoon, but would you and I both be known next year at this time as a more grateful person than we find ourselves to be today.
