All my life, I’ve loved conversations with my Uncle Gary and Aunt Marlene. Now retired, they’ve served from Peru to Pakistan, Hawaii to Sri Lanka – as missionaries, college profs and more. Here’s one thing Uncle Gary once shared, “Over the year, I’ve noticed the best indicator of whether I’m spiritually healthy or not is my gratitude.”
That was decades ago, and I’ve found it to be true, too. Nothing is a more accurate gauge of my life with God – and, really, my entire well-being – than the level of thankfulness in my heart.
When I’m distant from God and focused on myself, gratitude is rare. If things go well, I’m self-satisfied. If things go poorly, I’m irritable and complaining.
But when I’m walking near to God, gratitude comes naturally as breathing. I notice and name the blessings, thanking God and others for them. Even hard experiences remind of the countless gifts that remain all around me, despite real struggles.
That gratitude is a beautiful sensation – light, free, and self-forgetful. In my view, it is the best feeling. It’s not mere happiness in the superficial I-got-what-I-wanted sense. Rather, it’s happy in the deeper sense Jesus was talking about in the beatitudes: “Blessed” or “Happy” are the peacemakers, pure in heart, and hungry-for-righteousness.
Ponder the ‘gift-ness’ of small things
So how do we get more of that feeling: so light and glad, self-forgetful and caught-up-in-God’s-goodness?
Here’s just one little idea. Take a moment to ponder the gift-ness of even the smallest things.
A tea bag. It alchemizes a cup of hot water from a liquid into an encounter, a moment laden with aroma and warmth, flavor and wakeful calm.
That little satchel of crushed leaves bears the labor of so many souls. Farmers dreamed of a crop before the ground was even cleared. Laborers sowed, cultivated, irrigated, fertilized and harvested. Processors dried and prepared the plucked leaves. Factory owners envisioned and organized, workers ground and blended and packaged, managers ensured it all ran smoothly.
Then there are the entirely different industries that produced fibers for the tea bags, paper for the box, ink for labeling, the plastic for wrapping-in freshness. Of course, there were dozens of transporters, too, enabling each ingredient to meet in one place – then travel from the factory to ships and warehouses, sometimes on the opposite side of the globe. Finally, the armies of retail played their part also – building and operating stores, stocking shelves, and clerking that purchase into your hands.
Each one of these lives and innumerable more played a part in that little cup of tea. The warmth, aroma, flavor, wakeful calm – they are, one could say, a tiny part of those people, their effort and earnestness, now drinkable, taken into your body with pleasure.
It is surely a gift. Yes, you may have paid for it – perhaps several dollars for a brewed cup at a coffee shop or for a whole box of teabags at the store. Even so, it is a gift.
When one contemplates each task, every soul, all that was involved in bringing that moment to you, what you get far exceeds what you paid.
That’s grace, plain and simple.
It is right to give thanks to the Lord
And so with all of life. Yes, we pay and labor and sweat. But what we get always exceeds what we pay.
So let us give thanks for the people who play a part, both far and near, in each gift we enjoy.
Let us give thanks for the grace each small thing carries.
Most of all, let us give thanks to God, the giver of all good gifts.
As the people say together in the old Anglican liturgy, “It is right to give Him thanks and praise.”
And the leader responds, “It is right, our duty and our joy, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…”
Yes, this giving of thanks is both duty and joy. Duty because it is only right to meet generosity with gratitude. But also joy, because real gratitude feels so very good.
Without thankfulness, a gift falls dead at our feet. Gratitude is the one gift that unlocks all the others, turns little graces into wonders that lift our eyes and enliven our soul.
That’s a bit like what a good teabag does, alchemizing hot water into an experience, a moment rich in warmth, aroma, flavor and wakeful calm. Thanksgiving is, indeed, among the best things on earth.
-Jedd Medefind is the President of Christian Alliance for Orphans.
