Tag: thanksgiving

The Power of Gratitude

The power of gratitude wowed me when I first met our new neighbor, Della. She was in her 80s when we moved in next door, and she greeted us with a beaming smile and a litany of how happy she was to meet us. In subsequent encounters, which were frequent, she never failed to talk about how grateful she was for her life and how much God had blessed her.

Della radiated joy. And I thought, “That’s the way to live!” Even as dementia took her memory, she continued to do a little dance and recite her gratitude on a daily basis.

Della embodied one of my favorite quotes by 19th Century theologian, Alexander Maclaren.

“Seek to cultivate a buoyant joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.”

I love the words Maclaren uses—buoyant, joyous, crowded kindnesses. I can’t help but smile thinking about the picture he paints.

So many kindnesses. So much love. A God who crowds us with His kindnesses. A God who tells us to be grateful because He knows it will make us joyful. We can be buoyant—able to stay afloat no matter what—when we are grateful. This is the abundance of life God wants for us!

The Link Between The Power of Gratitude and Joy

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (another 19th Century theologian) said “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”

Joy is not something we produce. It’s something we find in the presence of God.

How do we get into God’s presence? We worship Him. We thank Him. (Psalm 100:4)

Being thankful is our way of saying, “You are good, Lord. And what You do is good. What You choose for my life is good. I trust You.”

Expressing gratitude is like planting a seed, and joy is the fruit that grows from it. We plant a seed without seeing its fruit. We just trust that something good will grow from it. It’s an act of faith. And the harvest we reap is joy.

A life filled with thanksgiving is a life that gets better and better. And I’m not talking about faking it, speaking in Christianese, or posing. I’m not saying we should ignore the trials we’re in.

I’m talking about thanking God (along with being honest about how hard it is) in the middle of those trials—if only for the fact that He promises He is with us during them. I’m talking about being on the lookout for things to be grateful for—regardless of what’s not going well on any particular day.

Not Just an Ancient Teaching

Aside from the fact that we are commanded to be grateful in the Bible (1 Thessalonians 5:18), gratitude is just a healthy practice for life. Even modern-day psychologists report this. In 2007, Robert Emmons began researching gratitude through a psychological lens. He found that expressing gratitude improves mental, physical and relational well-being. Being grateful impacts the overall experience of happiness, and these effects tend to be long-lasting.

Author Ann Voskamp said, “Being joyful isn’t what makes you grateful. Being grateful is what makes you joyful.”

If we want good mental health and a good life, gratitude needs to become a habit.

Lessons in the Power of Gratitude

Westerners who go on short-term mission trips often comment on the joy they see in people they work with. We are astounded that someone who lives in poverty can be joyful. But the same lessons of gratitude that apply to us apply to everyone. A lifestyle of gratitude doesn’t take away problems, it just makes them easier to bear.

A man who knows the power of gratitude.
William is grateful for training to become a fisherman.

William in South Sudan is an example of a grateful person. He was unable to provide enough for his family until he learned to fish. Now he has food for them, and an income.

William said, “I’m really thankful to God because I tried different things until I found this really was the main source of my livelihood. I previously didn’t know how to fish, so I asked people to show me and also learned by observing. Fishing is very beneficial to my family.”

Hla (name changed for protection) is another example of the power of gratitude. She lost everything when her home was burned to the ground and she escaped Myanmar with her family. After walking for nine days to reach Bangladesh they entered a refugee camp. The work she had in Myanmar was not available in the camp, but she was given an opportunity to learn how to sew and she took it.

A woman who knows the power of gratitude.
Hla has overcome many hardships, and she is grateful.

Hla said, “If I learn this work, I can keep my children safe. I can provide them an education. No one can steal or buy my skills.”

Instead of complaining over her circumstances, Hla expresses gratitude for aid workers. She said, “Without God, how can we live? God has created us and sent us into this world. He is giving us everything and feeding us. He is doing this through His agents.”

An Evergreen Virtue

Thanksgiving is a great time of year to be reminded of the power of gratitude. We generally make our “I’m grateful for” list sometime around this holiday. And at our house we go around the dinner table and say what we’re thankful for while feasting on turkey and favorite side dishes.

But gratitude isn’t something we take out of the closet for a certain holiday every year. It’s something that should be at our table, and on our lips, all year long. It’s evergreen.

Our neighbor Della lived to be 97, and I never tired of her grateful litany. In fact, I sought it out. Her joy lit up our lives, every single day.

Let us know what you’re grateful for in the comment section below. Share what you do to maintain a grateful heart. We’d like to hear from you and share your thoughts with others.

 

 

Thanksgiving, And How Not To Shop For Groceries

Pushing my shopping cart hurriedly through the supermarket aisles, I paused briefly to glance at my watch.

Four-thirty. Great, I still had time to get what I needed and make my doctor’s appointment.

Weaving past carts filled with food, expertly avoiding strollers,

Little April has been sick for 6 months, her body wasting away from a lack of good food.
Little April has been sick for 6 months, her body wasting away from a lack of good food.

and randomly placed boxes, I barely slowed down to grab each item off the shelf and toss it in my cart. I was on a roll; a can of peanuts, lightly salted of course … a bag of washed potatoes … risotto rice … a bunch of fresh celery … a dozen free-range eggs … and the list went on.

Within ten minutes I’d finished my shopping, proudly looking at the pile of groceries that now spilled over the side of my cart. I’d checked off every item on my list, and managed to find a checkout aisle with less than four people waiting. I am the greatest shopper in the world.

Out of breath, I now stood impatiently in the checkout line, waiting to now unload everything that I’d just put in. Well, at least they would repack it for me. It was around the time I was contemplating whether I wanted the 2 for 1 candy bar offer that I thought of April. Not the month, but a little one-year-old girl I’d been reading about earlier that afternoon.

Before my frantic trip to the grocery store, I’d spent a few hours with little April. She lives with her mom in a small village in Myanmar. I wasn’t physically sitting with her, but reading her story it sure felt like it. I read about how this precious one had been sick for over six months. That’s half her life.

Her mother shared April’s story with a colleague of mine, and told of how hungry they both were. She earned enough to buy the very basics; rice, and a few vegetables every now and then. But they were never fresh, and something always had to be sacrificed in order to afford them. It was clearly April’s health.

I unpacked my cart, haphazardly placing each item on the belt as the checker scanned, and dropped them in a paper bag. My thoughts were not on whether my eggs were cracked, but firmly focused on April, and the dire situation she was in.

April and her mom had been screened for malnutrition, and the results were not good. In villages across Myanmar (and elsewhere in Asia and Africa), World Concern staff visit children like April and test them for malnutrition and other illnesses. It’s a free service, and the results (while often shocking) can save a child’s life.

I read about how April’s mom carried her to the mobile clinic, sitting quietly on a chair and waiting for the volunteer to call them. April did nothing but cry; not a wail or an impatient tear, but a whimper, as if there was simply nothing left to cry about. Her mom did everything she could to comfort April—making faces, singing, and bouncing her on her knee—nothing worked. So she sat there, totally defeated, and waited for her daughter’s name to be called.

When it was April’s turn to be seen, the nurse first weighed April in a sling, kind of like a hammock, recording her weight before moving onto the next, and most

Baby April is gently weighed before a final test showed how quickly help was needed.
Baby April is gently weighed before a final test showed how quickly help was needed.

important test. The nurse delicately threaded a paper tape around April’s upper arm. This measures the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) and diagnoses the level of malnourishment according to a color scale—green is considered healthy, yellow shows that the child is malnourished, and red indicates severe and acute malnutrition.

April’s arm was in the red. And by a long way.

The cheerful grocery checker had almost finished packing my groceries, but at this stage all I could think about was April, and all I could hear was the beep … beep … beep … beep … of my food being scanned. Then I saw my total.

I quickly moved my eyes to my two bags of groceries. How is that $181.91?

Little April was starving, and here I am buying $181.91 worth of groceries. Her tiny immune system simply didn’t have the energy to keep on fighting, and so it was slowly giving up. She needed nutritious food, and quickly.

Thankfully, that’s exactly what World Concern is doing for hungry children in Myanmar and other communities like April’s. So after the clinic visit April’s mom was given an emergency food kit and told lovingly to come back when the basket was empty to receive more.

An emergency food kit gives a hungry child locally-sourced food, for just $22.
An emergency food kit gives a hungry child locally-sourced food, for just $22.

The basket they carried home that day was filled with locally-sourced, highly nutritious, fresh food—a bag of potatoes … nuts and beans … rice … fresh vegetables … free-range eggs—pretty much everything that I’d just bought.

And the cost of the emergency food kit? Only $22. I could feed 8 hungry children with what I just bought.

Collecting my receipt and trudging out to the car, I cringed at the abundance that was around me. Food was readily available. I had money to buy it. And I was about to visit my family doctor.

Later that evening I spoke with my son about April, and how we could give a hungry child basically everything I’d bought at the supermarket, for just $22.
My son is seven, and his response to me was exactly what ours should be:

“How many hungry kids will you feed?”