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A time for gratitude

We have so much to be thankful for, including the fact that 2020 is now in the rearview mirror and we have a brand-new year ahead of us. I’m hoping that 2021 will be a year filled with gratitude and thanksgiving.

Speaking of ingratitude, Shakespeare lamented the pain of ungrateful children when he said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child. Ingratitude, thou marble-headed fiend.”

A New York paper devoted many pages over several weeks to printing letters of children to Santa Claus. Several weeks after Christmas, an editorial was printed addressing ingratitude, stating that of the thousands of letters asking for gifts, only one writer followed up with a letter of thanks to Santa Claus after Christmas.

In “Gulliver’s Travels,” Jonathan Swift gave us his opinion of those who are ungrateful for friends who have helped them, when he described the laws of the Lilliputians: “Ingratitude is reckoned among them a capital crime: for they reason thus, that whoever makes ill return to his benefactors must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he hath received no obligation. And therefore, such a man is not fit to live.”

In other words, if a man does ill to one who has helped him, how much more will he do to those who have not helped him in any way?

The Bible encourages us to be grateful regardless of what we are going through. It says “Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” in Ephesians 5:20, and “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,” in I Thessalonians 5:18.

Some of the most valuable lessons in being thankful have been taught to us by those who have gone through especially devastating circumstances. I think of Joni Erickson Tada who while a teenager suffered a tragic diving accident that left her a quadriplegic. That incident was more than 50 years ago, and she continues to this day to demonstrate her heart of gratitude, reminding us that, “Giving thanks is not a matter of feeling thankful. It is a matter of obedience.”

William Hendrikson warned of the negative repercussions of trying to pray with an ungrateful heart.

“When a person prays without thanksgiving, he has clipped the wings of prayer so that it cannot rise,” he said.

Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh was famous for his pulpit prayers. He always found something to thank God for, even in bad times. One stormy morning, a member of his congregation thought to himself, “The preacher will have nothing to thank God for on a wretched morning like this.” But Whyte began his prayer, “We thank thee, O God, that it is not always like this.”

Matthew Henry, the famous scholar, was once accosted by thieves and robbed of his purse. He wrote these words in his diary:

“Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”

We’ve concluded a year filled with suffering. It’s my prayer that in some way each of us has learned something that will give us hope for the year ahead.

“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” in Romans 5:3-4.

 

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