Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NLT)]
The Lord afflicts us at times; but it is always a thousand times less than we deserve, and much less than many of our fellow-creatures are suffering around us. Let us therefore pray for grace to be humble, thankful, and patient. [John Newton]
My New York Times newsletter has a section called “What You’re Doing” in which readers share how they’re dealing with the pandemic—everything from dreaming up innovative waffle recipes to sending “karaoke grams” to friends on their birthdays. Today, M.B. wrote that she’d started 2020 with a line-a-day diary. Since March, however, she’d filled the diary with “dire COVID milestones, illness among family and friends, anger at deniers, and mourning for the loss of normal life, vacations, and more.” Tiring of her negativity on Thanksgiving Day, M.B. turned that line-a-day diary into a daily gratitude journal and reported having a positive attitude that will carry her through the pandemic.
The conditions haven’t gotten any better since Thanksgiving; in fact, the COVID numbers have gotten worse. The change isn’t in the circumstances because gratitude isn’t found in our circumstances. The change is in M.B because gratitude is found in our minds and M.B. is looking at the world with an attitude of gratitude. In 1919, during another pandemic when the nation was as troubled as it is now, minister and essayist Dr. Frank Crane wrote, “To be thankful simply means that one thinks he is better off than he deserves to be.” Crane went on to suggest that happiness is found in finding a balance between our condition and what we think our condition should be—between what we have and what we think we should have. If we want to be happy, Crane suggested that we whittle down our conception of what we think we should have to match what we actually do possess.
M.B.’s words struck a chord with me. These last few months, the entries in my daily gratitude journal have been sporadic. For example, rather than write I’m thankful that the Pfizer vaccine is about to be approved, I found myself complaining that our government only ordered 100 million doses (enough to inoculate only 50 million people) and it may be June before more is available. When I used an online tool to determine my place in the vaccine queue and learned that at least 118.5 million Americans are ahead of me, I was ready to grumble even more until I remembered Crane’s words. Appreciating that I’m no more deserving than anyone else in the world, I looked thankfully at what I have (health and an eventual place in line) rather than at what I’d prefer. I am thankful that the end is in sight—even if we need a telescope to see it! Yes, gratitude is an attitude and one that often takes a conscious effort to maintain.
We can change our circumstances or change our concept of what it is we deserve and it is great deal easier to change our thoughts than to change the world around us. God will generously provide for our needs but we must remember that He is under no obligation to give us everything we want. We can’t control the pandemic but we can control our thoughts. As bad as things may seem, I think we all would admit to having more and better than we deserve. Knowing we can’t have everything we desire, let’s be thankful for all that we do have!
There is much in this world beyond our control including the nation, the economy, COVID, other people, weather, and the noisy dogs next door. If we can’t change our circumstances, the only option is to change ourselves! M.B. is finding happiness in her new attitude of gratitude—one of recognizing and appreciating all that she has right now. Let us do the same!
With the back-to-back hurricanes that tore through Louisiana, two others that devastated Nicaragua and Honduras, and the consecutive typhoons that flooded the Philippines, a great many people must be asking, “Why us, Lord?” In spite of the meteorological explanations for the paths taken by those storms, there is something discomforting about the seeming randomness of such destruction. I can’t help but wonder, “Why them and not us?” In a universe of retribution and reward, we’d have a sense of being able to control our destiny; only bad things would happen to bad people and only good things to the good ones. If we did all the right things, life would go smoothly and, if we didn’t, we’d just be getting what we deserved! That, however, is not the way of the world and back-to-back hurricanes along with cancer, ALS, hit-and-run-drivers, stray bullets, and tornadoes hit both the deserving and undeserving.
When God asked Elijah what he was doing, the prophet’s answer should have been, “I’m having a pity party!” Having experienced the high point of life on Mt. Carmel, the prophet now found himself at an all-time low. Feeling abandoned, Elijah was bitter that, after serving God so zealously, he’d been rejected by Ahab and was running for his life.
Back in 1963, Bob Luman sang “You can take the boy from the country, But you can’t take the country from the boy.” Along the same line, Brookes & Dunn sang that while you could take the girl out of the honkey-tonk, you couldn’t take the honkey-tonk out of the girl. I wonder if Moses thought about singing, “You can take the people out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of the people!”
When Pat died, it was difficult to find words of comfort for her grieving husband. A non-believer, he has no faith in Jesus, no understanding of the soul, no hope of eternity, and no anticipation of Christ’s return. Distance and timing kept me from attending Pat’s Celebration of Life and, because we rarely saw one another, I’m not sure I felt her absence until today when I received a letter from her husband. With the letter was a bookmark made for her Celebration of Life. It had her picture and some sweet words about memories filling our hearts, time healing our souls, and the peace of knowing there’s one more angel in heaven. To a non-believer, those words may be comforting but, to me, they were empty (along with being theologically incorrect). I’ve never understood how non-believers find it so easy to believe in heaven and angels but so hard to believe in judgment, hell, God, or Jesus.
People often argue against God’s existence because of evil and suffering. With so much that is wrong in the world, they question how there could there be a god. Christian apologist C.S. Lewis was once an atheist who reasoned that such a cruel and unjust world proved the absence of God until he questioned where he got the idea of what was good or evil, just or unjust. He realized that something cannot be wrong or evil unless there is standard for what is right or good. In a universe with no God, there would be no standard for justice or injustice, good or evil, right or wrong: simply personal preferences. That standard, Lewis realized, is rooted in God. As a result, the very argument he used against God’s existence provided Lewis with proof of His presence!
Devotions of the Heart 