The Power of “Thanks-Giving”

I can recall a time over twenty years ago when life seemed somewhat bleak to me, when I was a bit brittle and disappointed, unable to see past my experiences to anything else. You might say my lens for looking at the world was shaped by events and emotions that seemed to color everything else.

During that time, this line from Psalm 116:12-13 kept coming back to me:

            How can I repay the Lord

                        for all the great good done for me?

            I will raise the cup of salvation

                        and call on the name of the Lord.

I knew in my head these words were true, but I was having a hard time allowing them to penetrate my daily existence. So, I decided to do something about it.

Each day I wrote down one or two good things that happened to me and that were not necessarily of my own doing. At first I was simply noting that the morning traffic wasn’t so bad, or that I had heard from a friend. Soon I was noting three or four things, some of them pretty superficial and some of them more personal and meaningful. Within a matter of months I was writing more than simple bullet points and putting my thoughts into paragraph form.

Slowly, it dawned on me that I was seeing the world differently. My new lens, so to speak, was creating a new clarity, and that clarity was changing me. Those words of Psalm 116 were taped to the mirror where I got ready to face each day, and I realized that they had become my words and not simply something I wished to be true. God had done great things for me and that slow realization was creating an abiding sense of gratitude, which in turn produced a deeper trust in God.

Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth century Dominican preacher and mystic, is known to have said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” In this season of our U. S. celebration of Thanksgiving, let’s commit to habits that will grow that gratitude gene that is part of our spiritual DNA. Let’s pray for the grace to recognize even in small ways what God is doing for us, among us, and within us.

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving in the bosom of your family or in an informal family of your own making, whether in service to others in need or by showing up at a job that does not allow the day off, remember that gratitude can shape both our inner and outer worlds. It’s not just for a season but for a lifetime:

            How can I repay the Lord

                        for all the great good done for me?

            I will raise the cup of salvation

                        and call on the name of the Lord

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