One of them (the ten lepers), when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Luke 17:15-18
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything... Ephesians 5:19-20
I wonder if you share with me a childhood memory? - being nagged (or perhaps I should say encouraged) by your parents to say “Thank you” for a present. In my day that involved the tedious business of actually writing letters (who writes letters these days!), and it took away some of the pleasure of the present you had received.
Tedious perhaps - but it is of course a good habit to get into, the habit of gratitude. The fact is that if you don’t say thank you now, the chances are you won’t say it at all. Good intentions, as we all know only too well, have a nasty habit of quickly melting away.
Paul tells the Christians of Ephesus to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything”. And the little story of Jesus healing the ten men with leprosy shows him expressing disappointment that only one of the ten (and him one of those hated Samaritans!), turned back to say thank you on being healed.
So the obvious question is: How good am I at remembering to be grateful?
When the Bible speaks of thankfulness it is usually being grateful to God that it has in mind. And most churches, I suspect, are quite good at that (indeed, there are times when I wonder if, in the course of a service, God actually gets a bit weary of being repeatedly thanked, especially if it’s always for the same thing). But the habit of gratitude to others is surely also a good thing.
I recently read an extract from a book by Paul Swann in which the author quotes scientific findings which suggest that people who remember to be thankful are likely to be happier and less prone to depression. Says Swann: “Gratitude is powerful because it undoes pride and despair, both of which are poison to the soul.”
It “undoes pride and despair”? I didn’t really understand that at first, but on reflection it began to make sense.
Gratitude undoes pride because it means recognising our debt to others, and accepting that we aren’t as perfect and self-contained as we would like to think. And it undoes despair because it means focussing on what good things we have, few though they may be, thus saving us from seeing things too negatively.
Put that into Christian language, and it is in essence a way of stirring up, first, humility (“I need God and other people; I am not self-contained”) and, second, faith (“I will see the hand of God in my circumstances”), both of which are healthy states of mind.
But - and this is the main point - gratitude doesn’t always come naturally: not, at least, in terms of the routine, everyday things. If we experience something bad, we immediately record it on our mental hard drive - it’s virtually impossible to forget. But things which are good, even if relatively ordinary, tend to slip out of our minds very quickly if we don’t make a conscious effort to reflect on them and digest them. This is part of the value of prayer which isn’t simply a string of requests, but which involves silent meditation as we reflect on our experiences.
Back again when I was a child there was a little song we used to sing in Sunday School: “Count your blessings, name them one by one./ Count your blessings, see what God has done./ Count your blessings, name them one by one,/ And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
Corny, perhaps, but true. Counting our blessings is a discipline we need to get into, and like every discipline it takes time and practice. A simple way to start is to spend a few minutes every evening before going to bed reviewing the day and recalling the good things.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let’s spell out again that we aren’t thinking here about a kind of shallow, forced optimism: “put on a happy face”, “always look on the bright side of life”, or just “accentuate the positive”. Millions of people, after all, have appallingly heavy burdens to carry, so there’s no place for trite slogans. No, we’re talking about a whole cast of mind, something deliberately and intentionally developed through reflection, meditation and prayer.
So... where does this lead us?
For one thing, we are reminded that gratitude gives pleasure to God, and lack of it saddens him. We are reminded too that a grateful spirit makes us more positive, more truly optimistic and more aware of how little most of us give in comparison with what we have received.
I invite you to join with me in a prayer of priest and poet George Herbert (1593-1633)...
Thou hast given so much to me... Give one thing more - a grateful heart. Amen.
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything... Ephesians 5:19-20
I wonder if you share with me a childhood memory? - being nagged (or perhaps I should say encouraged) by your parents to say “Thank you” for a present. In my day that involved the tedious business of actually writing letters (who writes letters these days!), and it took away some of the pleasure of the present you had received.
Tedious perhaps - but it is of course a good habit to get into, the habit of gratitude. The fact is that if you don’t say thank you now, the chances are you won’t say it at all. Good intentions, as we all know only too well, have a nasty habit of quickly melting away.
Paul tells the Christians of Ephesus to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything”. And the little story of Jesus healing the ten men with leprosy shows him expressing disappointment that only one of the ten (and him one of those hated Samaritans!), turned back to say thank you on being healed.
So the obvious question is: How good am I at remembering to be grateful?
When the Bible speaks of thankfulness it is usually being grateful to God that it has in mind. And most churches, I suspect, are quite good at that (indeed, there are times when I wonder if, in the course of a service, God actually gets a bit weary of being repeatedly thanked, especially if it’s always for the same thing). But the habit of gratitude to others is surely also a good thing.
I recently read an extract from a book by Paul Swann in which the author quotes scientific findings which suggest that people who remember to be thankful are likely to be happier and less prone to depression. Says Swann: “Gratitude is powerful because it undoes pride and despair, both of which are poison to the soul.”
It “undoes pride and despair”? I didn’t really understand that at first, but on reflection it began to make sense.
Gratitude undoes pride because it means recognising our debt to others, and accepting that we aren’t as perfect and self-contained as we would like to think. And it undoes despair because it means focussing on what good things we have, few though they may be, thus saving us from seeing things too negatively.
Put that into Christian language, and it is in essence a way of stirring up, first, humility (“I need God and other people; I am not self-contained”) and, second, faith (“I will see the hand of God in my circumstances”), both of which are healthy states of mind.
But - and this is the main point - gratitude doesn’t always come naturally: not, at least, in terms of the routine, everyday things. If we experience something bad, we immediately record it on our mental hard drive - it’s virtually impossible to forget. But things which are good, even if relatively ordinary, tend to slip out of our minds very quickly if we don’t make a conscious effort to reflect on them and digest them. This is part of the value of prayer which isn’t simply a string of requests, but which involves silent meditation as we reflect on our experiences.
Back again when I was a child there was a little song we used to sing in Sunday School: “Count your blessings, name them one by one./ Count your blessings, see what God has done./ Count your blessings, name them one by one,/ And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
Corny, perhaps, but true. Counting our blessings is a discipline we need to get into, and like every discipline it takes time and practice. A simple way to start is to spend a few minutes every evening before going to bed reviewing the day and recalling the good things.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let’s spell out again that we aren’t thinking here about a kind of shallow, forced optimism: “put on a happy face”, “always look on the bright side of life”, or just “accentuate the positive”. Millions of people, after all, have appallingly heavy burdens to carry, so there’s no place for trite slogans. No, we’re talking about a whole cast of mind, something deliberately and intentionally developed through reflection, meditation and prayer.
So... where does this lead us?
For one thing, we are reminded that gratitude gives pleasure to God, and lack of it saddens him. We are reminded too that a grateful spirit makes us more positive, more truly optimistic and more aware of how little most of us give in comparison with what we have received.
I invite you to join with me in a prayer of priest and poet George Herbert (1593-1633)...
Thou hast given so much to me... Give one thing more - a grateful heart. Amen.
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