The other day, I was feeding breakfast to four of our grandchildren. As they started plowing into their toast and oatmeal, I stopped and asked for one of them say the blessing. Instead of the typical condensed version so that they could eat, one of them prayed, not just thanking God for the food, but asking His blessing on our day, that they would have fun and that He would be with us in whatever we did.
It was a beautiful way, not just to start a meal, but to start the day.
And by asking for God’s blessing, how did it change how we approached the day and how we saw Him? The act of asking God for His blessing doesn’t bring on His blessing, but empowers us to actually see His blessing in it. Are we even aware of what God brings into our day, His hand upon us, and His Presence with us?
O give thanks to the LORD,
for His steadfast love endures forever.
Psalm 118. 29
May these words be embodied as our refrain and our response, no matter what we experience in this life. These words are inscribed throughout the Old Testament. May they become seamlessly woven into our vocabulary and into our prayers.
Is thankfulness part of how we pray?
The first half of this verse is easy. We know to give thanks for what we see as good – even though we are often amiss in verbalizing it.
But we can wrap up the mysteries, the hard stuff, the wounds, the overwhelming with the second half: His steadfast love endures forever.
We can stake our lives on that promise. It may be difficult to thank God for our really tough situations. But we can have a thankful heart even in them. A grateful heart sees differently. A grateful heart prays differently. A grateful heart looks really distinctive in this broken world. Not because those who are thankful are perfect, and life is easy for them, but because God is real.
As with forgiveness, as Tim Keller says in his new book Forgive, for the believer, gratefulness is “…not optional, it is an act of the will, and it requires divine help.” Gratefulness is not an emotion, nor having a good attitude. It is how we choose to respond. In the hard stuff, thankfulness is not a natural reaction, but a supernatural one. And it takes God’s indwelling for us to live that way and pray that way.
As we move past this Thanksgiving Day and into our ordinary days (which are never so ordinary), may we not just be thankful for _____(fill in the blank), but grateful to God. Not just to have a warm and fuzzy feeling, or give God a thumbs up emoji, but respond with words:
O give thanks to the LORD,
for His steadfast love endures forever.
Psalm 118. 29
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