Since we’re still in the Thanksgiving state of mind, I thought I’d address something that doesn’t come easily to saved sinners: giving thanks to God when we don’t feel thankful. The reason gratitude is so difficult at times is our benighted interpretation of circumstances. Life is a continuous process of interpretation, and our fallen tendency is to interpret events and situations in our lives by our finite, self-centered assessment. If something (or someone), is difficult, painful, or frustrating, if it keeps us from getting what we want, or think we want, we naturally interpret it as a “problem” (take a look at the many synonyms for that word). It’s easy when obstacles are thrown our way to think something is “wrong.” How could this happen? Why is this happening? Ugh! This response is sinful, and not worthy of a person who claims God in Christ as our Savior, who is the Almighty Sovereign ruler of the universe. Yet we do it all the time. It’s a constant theme of repentance in my own life.
How we counter this sin in our lives is quite simple, as hard as it often is to live out: We commit ourselves to interpreting everything in our lives according to God’s interpretation. Big, gargantuan difference! It’s striking to me how easily I fall into Satan’s trap of thinking that my perspective on things is the authoritative perspective, as if how I see things is the reality of those things. Needless to say, as it must constantly be said, it isn’t! Either God is providentially in control of all things for our good and his glory, or he is not. It’s that simple. But life is hard, as Jesus told us it would be. Why are we always surprised when it is?
It’s not as if God hasn’t warned us that life would be difficult. Jews and Christians know why:
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Painful toil? Sweat of your brow? Thorns and thistles? Sounds like life in a fallen world. Notice, though, that a perfectly biblical three times God tells Adam that, “you will eat.” We never have to doubt, as hard as it might be, that God will provide, and he provides so much more than physical sustenance. I’ve learned lo these many years, two great lessons of gratitude:
- The first is to accept that God’s promises are eternal. He never promises us our “best life now.” The secular culture tells us ad nauseam, and it really is nauseating (try enduring TV commercials for any length of time and you’ll see why), that this life is it! This life is all that matters. Everything is pitched to fulfill our desires now. It is not so for the Christian. The word forever is used 255 times in the Old Testament, and the vast majority of the references have to do with God’s promises to his people. This mist of a life is in fact not it! We’re in this thing for way more than now, so our perspective ought to reflect it.
- The second is to trust those promises. More importantly, we are to trust those promises in Christ. One of the most important verses that helps us do this is Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I often joke that surely Paul can’t mean all things. Maybe ninety-five percent, but all? All sort of encompasses everything, and every thing is clearly not good. But Paul doesn’t say all things are good, only that God works them for our good. And what is our good? Paul says in verse 29 it is to be “conformed to the image of His Son.”
C.S. Lewis, without mentioning the lessons, put it this way:
If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.
I put it this way: For the Christian, life is a school. Everything teaches. Christians, therefore, have the perfect rationale for gratitude even when we don’t feel grateful. The secret is found in Isaiah’s words: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
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