Choosing Gratitude

September 16, 2019

I don’t always feel very thankful, but I give thanks anyway. My days are pretty ordinary; they have their bright spots and times of conflict or confusion, and times of emotional flatlining. This business of being thankful is not as much an emotional response to blessings I experience as it is a determination, a choice to obey the Scriptures which tell me to “give thanks in everything.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). 

Lately I’ve been wrestling with what it means to know God. Some people have experiences that move them deeply, that turn their lives around, saving them from habits and deeds destructive to themselves and/or others. My Pentecostal brothers and sisters live in a world in which they feel the presence of God in very emotive ways, yet they and I know that feelings are not a reliable indicator of that Presence. The presence and growth of religious cults provides plenty of evidence of the failure of emotional experiences as signs of the presence of God.

So how do we know? Everyone looks for happiness and most of us equate finding it with a Higher Good. But that blissful feeling can be produced by narcotics and alcohol as well as by the Holy Spirit, which is one reason St. Paul tells the Ephesian Christians to be filled with the Holy Spirit instead of alcohol. Feeling good is not an adequate indicator of whether we know God because it is too subjective. C.S. Lewis once said that Christianity is a pretty poor way of finding happiness. “A bottle of Port can do that,” he noted. Christianity is all about transforming us—albeit sometimes painfully slowly—from being self-focused individuals to being God-and-other-focused individuals. If the measure of my faith is how I feel, I will always be focusing on me, trying to make me feel better. That is a pretty narcissistic way of living, and is doomed to failure because it elevates me and my feelings to the place God has reserved for himself.

My daily (and often hourly) decisions to give thanks are my way of taking the focus off me and placing it in God, who is the giver of all gifts. Gratitude is not dependent on my circumstances, but rather upon my choices. It often sounds pretty mechanical and legalistic, but is anything but. When I give thanks, I reach beyond myself. When I give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I reach beyond myself to the One who is Savior and Lord of this otherwise selfish and narcissistic man. So tonight, I give thanks, turning my full attention to Jesus Christ, attempting in the process to discern his glory even in the humdrum of life.