Gratitude

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord.” – Psalm 92:1

Why is it so hard for me to give thanks? I become preoccupied with cares. I grow desensitized to what I have. I fail to notice small graces. I’m too busy complaining about what I don’t have. I’m in too much of a hurry. I’ve fallen out of the habit. I’ve conformed to a consumeristic culture. 

All of those may be true. But I think perhaps John the Baptist said it best. He said, “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27). Not even one thing. Every single thing in your life is an act of grace. It is a gift. It is something to be noticed and received with gratitude. Our ability to give thanks will extend as far as we see the grace in our lives, as far as we see this reality. Nouwen writes, “Gratitude… claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

There is an Estonian proverb that says, “Whoever does not thank for little will not thank for much.” Sometimes, I think, it’s okay to start with small steps. At first, thankfulness feels like conscious effort. Slowly, it becomes a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. Slowly, we find that those small things themselves reveal the reach of God’s grace, like truths worked from outside in. “Acts of gratitude,” writes Nouwen, “make one grateful because, step by step, they reveal that all is grace.”