A spirit of thankfulness
Believe it or not, being thankful is a tricky thing. Sometimes thankfulness is nonexistent.
This writer recently ran across someone who had not one iota of thanksgiving in her. Her faith in science was so strong she thought anyone who believed in anything else was certifiably insane (her words, not mine). The reason for her lack of thankfulness is easy to see after that. If science is a collection of indisputable facts (again, her words, not mine) how does one create an attitude of thanksgiving to something so impersonal? Her militant attitude created a shell around her so hard and embittered that other viewpoints could not penetrate it, even if the other person was positing a theory based on her own premise. Gratitude could find no ground, so its flower never bloomed.
Sometimes gratitude, that attitude of thankfulness, gets misplaced.
This one is easy.
Gratitude is given where or to whom it doesn’t belong. It’s the stuff of movie subplots. Boy sends girl a gift. The note gets switched or lost before delivery, so the girl assumes the gift comes from someone else. Off we go down a lane of comedic mishaps or dramatic disclosures, depending on the reason the note got mishandled. Gratitude finds a place, but it is the wrong ground. Will its flower bloom, or be cut too soon if it does?
Sometimes thankfulness is withheld. Perhaps the one who should be grateful simply regards what he has received as his just due, an expected service. Or perhaps that one is just too busy to notice when something beneficial is done for him. Maybe that one just takes things for granted, always has been there, always will be.
Or worst of all, gratitude is withheld because the person who deserves it is disliked. Thanksgiving in these circumstances is nothing more than a blighted bloom barely beyond the bud.
The psalms talk a lot about thanksgiving, some of it in the context of what happens when there is a lack of it.
Psalm 107 is an example.
The Hebrews had first hand experience of God’s goodness. But there were times when that experience got lost in the background noise, got taken for granted. God let the natural consequences of that neglect blight the bloom of their lives until they cried out for relief. He was glad to give them that, and for a while things were fine, until it happened again. Psalm 95 hits much the same theme, but adds one important thought. God’s resources are boundless. Everything is His, to be distributed as He pleases. Psalms 107 and 116 build on both those ideas, adding in the notion that thanksgiving should be accompanied by sacrifice. The idea is God has given so much to us, done so much for us, that we prove our thanks by giving some of it right back to Him. We show that the flower has bloomed in the right ground, with nothing held back.
Psalm 100 shows us what our attitude should be. And why. “Make a joyful noise to Jehovah, all you lands. Worship Jehovah with gladness, come before His presence with singing. Know that Jehovah, He is God. He has made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful to Him and bless His name. For Jehovah is good. His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endures to all generations.”
Each of us may only have one flower in our individual gardens. But it can bloom. How? Maybe it is time to tune out the background noise and concentrate on thanksgiving for a while, don’t you think?
(Philip Severi, a former Bishop resident, previously wrote a weekly column for The Inyo Register.)