When Gratitude Isn’t Easy
Our dear friend, Zig Ziglar, said this famous quote: “Your gratitude attitude determines your life altitude”. And it is true. How many times have I caught myself in stinkin’ thinkin’ about something I wanted and couldn’t have or something I didn’t want but had it? I sincerely desire to be a 24/7 optimistic woman who always errs on the side of gratitude!
But sometimes gratitude isn’t so easy to express — especially when we’ve tried hard to make it work out — but we failed anyway. Or, when the excruciating pain in our body is more than we can bear, and we just want to be able to fall asleep for a moment of freedom. Or, when the phone call comes in that tells us about the tragedy and the loss of our loved one.
Thanksgiving and gratitude aren’t easy when the chaos in our lives is beyond repair or when the emotional weight is unbearable or when our minds whirl with sadness.
But then, a still small voice whispers in our ears: “What CAN you be thankful for, right now, in this place?” Those startling words seem to break up the darkest of nights. Then we remember God’s Word that says we don’t have to be thankful FOR all things. He just asks us to be thankful IN all things. (I Thessalonians 5:18).
The Bible talks about the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Offering up a sacrifice – something I don’t really want to offer up at the time. It costs me something. Something that I really am not ready to give up. Please, just let me wallow in self-pity for just a little while longer.
But, no, that’s not the way it works. When we are stumbling through the valley of loss and searching frantically to find our way to God, is exactly the time to choose to humbly and painfully, out of the core of our beings to say: “I will thank you, God. I will turn my heart to thanks. Even when gratitude isn’t easy.”
“You are my God, and I will praise You; You are my God, and I will exalt You.” Psalm 118:28
In the waiting times, or in the heartbreaking seasons of grief and pain, we have a choice to make. When we choose to turn our despair into a deliberate confession that God is good even when the circumstances are not, that is offering one of the sweetest sacrifices we can to the One who sacrificed it all for us.
The sacrifice of thanksgiving says that even here, in this pit, I will choose to believe God’s goodness. I don’t know how, but I choose to believe “In ALL THINGS God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
These praise and thanksgiving offerings preach to our souls that God is working for our good even when we cannot imagine it. Such gratitude expresses that all God’s ways are good for us even though we can’t see it yet.
Whether we feel like it or not, we can believe that God is acting on our behalf behind the hidden doors of heaven even as we wait patiently for the evidence. When we echo the heart of the Psalmist in praise and thanksgiving in our dark nights of the soul, a pinprick of light will break through.
I hear Him saying to us now: “Weeping only lasts for the night. Hold on, my child, joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5).