Conscious of Our Treasures--November 24, 2020

Conscious of Our Treasures--November 24, 2020

"Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." [Philippians 4:6]

If you want to be more fully alive, practice gratitude.

Really.  

There's no ritual you have to follow.  No spiritual pilgrimage required.  No magic prayer to pray or mantra to recite.  But rather, the intentional, deliberate, conscious practice of appreciating what and who you have in this life, and saying thank you for them.  Giving thanks--both to the people for whom you are grateful, and to the God who puts them in your life--helps us to see what we have been blessed with and realize these things were not owed to us.  They are grace.

I am often reminded of the wisdom of Thornton Wilder on this subject, who wisely said, "We can only said to be alive when our hearts are conscious of their treasures."  And that's just it--gratitude is not merely about good manners (although good manners are a lovely and delightful thing, and I highly recommend them as opposed to being a jerk in life).  Gratitude opens our eyes to see and to appreciate what has been put in our hands, especially when we are tempted to take things for granted or look for things to grouse about. 

I want to be more fully alive, so I'm going to take Wilder's advice--because it is very much in keeping with the Apostle Paul's direction, too.  Thankfulness has a place in everything.  Even when I have needs that are urgent and I bring those to God in prayer, gratitude changes the conversation.  When I choose thankfulness in my prayers, I am reminded of why we can be confident God is listening.  The practice of giving thanks calls to mind all the answered prayers of the past and helps us to see that God has been good to us over and over and over again.  It gives me reason to keep bringing my needs to God, and gives me a peace in knowing that God has provided for my needs and graced me beyond my earning plenty of times before.

In other words, practicing gratitude in prayer isn't about trying to butter God up before we make our "big ask" of whatever the next thing is that we need.  It's not that God will be snitty if we forget to say "Thank you," but rather than without the regular practice of gratitude we start to lose our senses of all the blessings around us.  We forget that the smell of a wood fire on a cold day is special, or that the sound of rain is a thing of beauty.  We stop noticing the kindness of strangers or the effort friends and family make to brighten our days.  We take things for granted or find only complaints, and we become a little less alive.

So on a day like today... in the week that it is on the calendar... in the year that has been full of so much turmoil and disappointment, it is easy--but dangerous--to spend all of our attention on the things that didn't go our way.  Yes, we can name them.  And yes, we can be honest about them.  But it is worth taking the time to recognize the good, the beautiful, and the graceful that is all around us.  Yeah, maybe you don't get to have family over for Thanksgiving this year, or to travel to see whomever you might usually see on this day.  Yeah, there's much that is uncertain and frustrating these days.  Yeah, some days it is hard just to make ourselves watch or listen to the news for all the eye-rolling and head-shaking it makes us do.  But alongside all those things, you and I were given another day today.  You and I are blessed again with people who love us.  You and I have been given a love that will not let us go in Christ Jesus.  You and I get to eat today.  You and I are given the opportunity to be a part of this gorgeous, vibrant, vital world, we who live on this small blue planet in the vastness of a galaxy beyond our comprehension, which is only one of a countless host of other galaxies.  Seeing just the fact of our existence in the midst of the infinite expanse of the cosmos has a way of putting my petty complaints and grievances back into their proper place.

Maybe it just starts with the thoughtful sentence that begins, "Today, I am grateful for..." and to see where it goes.  And then we try it again tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the next.  And before long, we are recognizing grace and goodness that is lavished upon us all the time but that we had been too busy, too entitled, or too numb to notice.

See?  Being thankful really does make us more fully alive.  Thanks be to God for bringing us to life in new ways all the time.

Lord God, thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.