Rev. Deborah Church Worley
November 24, 2019, Thanksgiving Sunday
White Rock Presbyterian Church
As you may or may not know, [here at WRPC] today is Consecration Sunday, the day when we, as individuals, are invited to commit to sharing a portion of our financial resources with the church in the coming year; and, consequently, when we, as a church, receive those offerings.
My prayer is that both of those acts, both the giving and the receiving, are done with a spirit of gratitude.
Appropriately, it seems to me, today is also Thanksgiving Sunday, the first day of this Thanksgiving week, a time when, across the United States, hearts and minds are tuned in, far more than usual, to the many good things in our lives. Regardless of all kinds of boundaries and divisions–socioeconomic, political, racial, religious–people will be giving thanks to God for the good things God has done for them. This week, as we move closer and closer to Thanksgiving Day, there will be an increasing “attitude of gratitude” around the country. And so this week, as Americans, we celebrate and give thanks!
But today, as members and friends of White Rock Presbyterian Church, we also celebrate and give thanks! We give, we receive, we worship…and in all and through all, we give thanks. Because God is good! And God has blessed us! And there is much for which we can be thankful! There is so much that can stir in us an “attitude of gratitude”…right?
For example…what? Shout out some things for which you are grateful….whether church-related or not. Anything for which you feel moved to give thanks…
So many things… If I had a shorter sermon, I’d let you keep going! 🙂 I’m sure we easily could spend our remaining time together sharing things for which we are thankful. But I do have some other thoughts I’d like to share about this idea of having an “attitude of gratitude.” 🙂
But this “attitude of gratitude”…. It’s such a good thing, right? Certainly that’s what the more than 38 million websites that Google comes up with when you type in “attitude of gratitude,” say!
You can quickly find the advantages of cultivating an attitude of gratitude, and how to adopt an attitude of gratitude, and how to maintain an attitude of gratitude, and famous people who exhibit an attitude of gratitude, and quotes to inspire you to live with an attitude of gratitude…. You can even find scientifically proven benefits of gratitude, for those of you who are so inclined. 🙂
In my quick skimming of just a few of the millions of articles related to this practice, I saw only praise and accolades, only benefits and advantages. I did not see one word, not even a single hint, of anything negative that might result from adopting a perspective of thankfulness.
Was this surprising? No.
Was it contrary to my own experience with gratitude? A little…
I have to confess that I sometimes struggle with this “attitude of gratitude” thing.
I’m not saying that it’s a struggle for me to feel grateful. I am very grateful for many, many things in my life, past, present, and presumably, future. And I like to think that I not only feel gratitude quite readily, but that I express it with equal willingness, whether to my family, friends, strangers, or God. As my children can attest to, in fact, I’ve even been known to shout out my thanks to “the traffic light gods” when we fly through a string of green lights!
What I am saying is that every now and then it’s difficult for me to feel gratitude for all that is good in my life without also considering those who may not be experiencing similar levels of goodness….
Sometimes, for example, when I feel gratitude for my family and all those who love me, I am also led to think about those who struggle to name anyone who loves them….
Occasionally, it can be difficult for me to feel grateful for having food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over my head without thinking also about those who don’t have those things….
Every so often, when I am moved to feel thankful for good health, or clean drinking water, or meaningful work, or a safe place to live, then those who do not have all, or perhaps even any, of those things also come to mind….
Several years ago at Christmas time, a dear friend gifted me with a Sierra Club “Engagement Calendar.” She had gotten one of them for herself, too, and suggested that we use them not as planners, but rather as gratitude journals, writing down five things we felt grateful for each day.
And so, beginning January 1 of the following year, I joined her in journaling my gratitude, trying to list not just general things for which I was grateful, like family, friends, and food to eat, but more specific things, such as snow pants (Jan. 7), the sound of rain on the roof (Apr. 9), and my then 5-yr-old daughter and 3-yr-old son “spontaneously giving each other hugs and kisses” while we were waiting in line at our local hardware store! (June 2)
I did pretty well for the first few months of the year, acknowledging my gratitude for many different good things in my life, big and small. As the year went on, however, my entries became more and more infrequent, finally coming to a complete halt mid-summer.
Beginning July 18th, the pages of my gratitude journal are completely empty. For pages and pages, for weeks and even months, there’s not an entry to be found.
What happened?? Did my entries dwindle because of the arrival of summer and the change of schedule that always brings? Did my commitment to my psuedo-New Year’s resolution simply peter out? Did I run out of things to be grateful for??
The explanation for my silence can be found on a page fairly close to the end of the journal. On November 3rd, I penned my first entry since July 17th. Like it or not, documented there in black and white, is the reason for those many empty pages.
Here is what I wrote:
“Okay…here I am…back after a long ‘break’…back because [my friend and partner in gratitude journaling] said, ‘Oh, just do it!’….There are just SO many things in my life for which I am grateful, [that] I started feeling guilty…….?????….but, I’ll try again. Today I’m thankful for…” and I listed five things.
I had stopped recording my gratitude because I felt guilty.
It had been so easy for me to be grateful for so many good things in my life, that I had begun to feel unfairly “gifted” with Goodness…and I didn’t know what to do with that.
One therapeutic response to feeling guilty for an undeserved tipping of the scales of Goodness could certainly be giving back…doing for others…sharing the bounty of my life with those who, for whatever reason, had less.
But I was already doing that.
I was working as a youth pastor. I had volunteered in soup kitchens and in hospices. I had served two years as a missionary. As a family, we were giving money not only to the church but to a number of additional charities. There was no shortage of “giving back” in my life. And yet, it seemed that I could not give back enough to balance the scales.
When I focused on the many things for which I felt grateful, it more often felt overwhelming in a guilt-inducing way rather than in any awe- or humility- or thankfulness-inducing way, which is not, presumably, the desired outcome of adopting an “attitude of gratitude”!
And so, what to do? I was at a loss, and so I had simply stopped “counting my blessings.” I stopped documenting my gratitude.
Did I stop feeling grateful? Not in the least.
Did I stop feeling guilty? Not very much.
Did I come up with other ways to resolve my dilemma? Not a single one!
Then I read a devotional written by the late, and in my opinion, great, Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen. His words gave me something to consider in my ongoing struggle with gratitude. This is what he said:
“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives–the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work.
But we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.
Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”
What I heard in those words is that my gratitude had been too limited in its scope. Instead of having been grateful for too many things, as I’d been thinking, I had been grateful for too few!
I’d been readily giving thanks for all that I perceived as good in my life–things that increased the love, joy, laughter, comfort, security, good health, smiles, etc.–but not so much for the things I’d perceived as bad–anything that might have brought pain,anger, upset, sadness, discomfort, confusion, and so on.
Perhaps I needed to simply be grateful for my life, for all that it is, and has been, and will be–the comfortable and the uncomfortable, the tenderness and the anger, the ease and the challenge, the laughter and the tears, the clarity and the confusion, the times of good health and the times of illness, the conflict and the peace, the love and the hurt, the good and the bad….
Perhaps if I could do that, then the focus of my gratitude will shift from perceived “good” things to all things…not only doing away with any “scales of Goodness” (and the resultant feelings of guilt that came from a perceived unfair tipping toward me!) but presumably leading to an ever-increasing trust, as Nouwen said, “that [I] will soon see in [my life] the guiding hand of a loving God.”
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, he wrote, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to [God’s] purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
It doesn’t say “Trust in the things that you think are good, because they are, in fact, good, and if you trust in them, everything will work out for you.”
It says (my paraphrase!), “Trust in God and God’s purpose, and all things will work together for good.”
What is that good? We may not know, we may not see, we may not understand–not now and perhaps not in our lifetime–but we can trust that God knows, and that God’s purpose is good!
In another of Paul’s letters, later in the New Testament, we find his well-known exhortation to the Thessalonians to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, [and] give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, emphasis added).
Had he been aware of the phrase, Paul might have suggested having an “attitude of gratitude!
And not just when things are good, and comfortable, and easy, and fun, when life is full to the brim with love and peace; not just when the way ahead seems straight and smooth; but also when life is hard, and uncomfortable, and challenging; when life is infuriating and lonely, and it hurts; when the path that lies before us is pitch black and terrifying.
That is the challenge. That is the test. That, perhaps, is the true indicator of how deeply a person is committed to living with an attitude of gratitude–can he or she continue to give thanks even when circumstances suggest, and even would seemingly demand, otherwise?
Can there be gratitude in the face of pain? loss? betrayal? grief?
Can gratitude be expressed in the midst of illness? heartache? abandonment?
Can an attitude of gratitude survive when it seems there’s not a single thing in sight for which to feel obviously grateful?
Paul would have us believe that it can….and I, for one, would like to join him in that belief. And I want to invite us to join him in that belief!
Can we live with an attitude of gratitude in these times? Can we move away from being grateful simply for that which seems good, and move toward being able to “give thanks in all circumstances,” trusting more and more that “all things work together for good for those who love God”–which I believe we do– “who are called according to [God’s] purpose”–which I believe we are!
We are called to live the life that we’ve been given, right here and right now, being the people God has created us to be–with our gifts and liabilities, with our strengths and our weaknesses, with our smooth facades and our rough edges, with all of our selves…
So that we can be the church God is calling us to be–with our hopes and our fears, with our successes and our failures, with our dreams and our worries, with all of who we are…giving thanks for all things and in all circumstances–whether the moments are pleasant or uncomfortable, whether the decisions are easy or challenging, whether the occasions are fun or contentious, whether the resources are abundant or scarce…
We are called to give thanks to God, trusting that all of that will work together for God’s Good purpose…whatever that may be.
I think those 38-million-plus articles on Google have it right, after all. I think having an attitude of gratitude is, indeed, a good thing.
In fact, I think it’s a God thing.
Let’s see if we can’t have one, together.
Amen.
Rev. Deborah Beloved Church (aka "Pastor Deb") 