What is striking as I think about it is how many people I have forgotten to thank, and for so many kindnesses and favors. Superficially, a thank you note is about good manners – but I’m only mildly interested in etiquette. I want people to know I appreciate them, that I’m honored by them.
More importantly, I want to be a grateful person. Like everybody else, I’m tempted toward a sense of entitlement. I’m drawn toward what I think I deserve. I easily lurch into a sense of self-sufficiency. But these moods are not of God – and they are not even the truth about me or anybody else. We are all great debtors. On my own I’d be nobody, except one to be pitied. The more I realize how all the good in my life is a gift, and the more I express thanks for the wonders in my life, the richer I am, the more spiritually settled I become.
The Bible speaks constantly of gratitude: “I do not cease to give thanks for you” (Ephesians 1:16). “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good” (Psalm 107:1). You can’t thumb through many pages without reading expressions of thanks.
Disciplined practice of gratitude makes us grateful people, and deepens our gratitude to God – and even teaches us how to ask God for things: “With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). Not “Ask, then give thanks if you get what you wanted,” but “With thanks, ask.”
Gratitude is contagious. If someone thanks me, I’m inclined to thank somebody else – so more people are encouraged, and a whole church, a whole community might become a grateful, encouraging place.
If you want to know God, and to be worshipful, and even a nobler, more contented person, try this praxis: write a thank you note or two, or four or seven, each day.
