Thankful for Gratitude

February 8, 2019

The habit of gratitude is not as easy as it sounds. You would think that for someone like myself living in the relative comfort, peace, and safety of early twenty-first century rural United States would be overflowing with reasons for gratitude...and you would be correct. The problem isn’t a lack of gratitude fodder, but the ability to see through and beyond everything that comes between the gift and the recipient. A quarter held at arm’s length does nothing to block out the light of the sun, but take that same quarter and place it right in front of the eye, and it inhibits the ability to see anything at all.

We live in a world where we are constantly barraged with negative information. Politics, crime, environmental disasters, health issues are but a few of the things the media throws at us nearly every waking hour. There was once a time when people got the news once a week; they had a full seven days to digest everything before it came around again. They could ponder at leisure the information before them. Often, by the time the news arrived, the entire situation had changed. There was no sense in getting worked up over stuff that had, by the time it was known, become old news. 

Now, we somehow feel that if we aren’t thinking of current events day in and day out, we are somehow being negligent. We aren’t “fully informed,” and so we obviously can’t form the correct opinion. 

For me, the recent passing of a radical anti-life law by our New York State governor has been continually on my mind. I wake up saddened by the callousness and brazenness of our legislature’s culture of death. Though it wouldn’t have changed anything, I might have felt a little better about it had the bill been reluctantly signed into law, but instead it was cheered and celebrated. It is beyond my understanding how otherwise civilized people can celebrate the killing of innocent children. 

Here’s my dilemma: I can’t ignore this evil, but I dare not allow it to consume me. I must choose not only life, but joy and gratitude. Any fool can see the evil; it takes deliberate effort to focus on the good. But if we fail to do so, the evil will engulf us. So tonight, I find joy in having my grandchildren camped out all through our house. I am grateful to have been able to visit my elderly mother this morning and to spend time with our granddaughter Abi this afternoon as we drove home. I am grateful for my wife who makes our house a home, for the warmth of the fire, for Monday’s weather that allowed me to ride my motorcycle, for the gift of music, for the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, for friends with whom I prayed this week. The list goes on and on. It is my lifeline in stormy seas. I am thankful tonight for having learned the power of gratitude and for the ability to give thanks, no matter what.