A Gratitude Adjustment

This past Sunday, I spoke on gratitude. Not only because it is the thanksgiving season but gratitude should be our way of life. Recently, I shared a great truth with the people who were attending my Wednesday night study - A Christ-Like Life. The truth was about privilege and discontent. I spoke with someone who was seemingly ungrateful about their job. It was not that long ago, they had started this job and their exuberance for the role was amazing. They saw their job as a privilege and since they were selected from so many other applicants they were grateful. But now they had allowed themselves to become discontent in areas with the job and finding flaws in co-workers and wanting more dollars on the pay check. If you can picture two large tanks in your mind, it will allow you to see my simple illustration. When the tank of privilege is filled up, excitement running high and a sense of joy filling the tank, it affects everything else about you. But when privilege begins to lessen and negativity sets in, the once positive heart that filled out privilege tank now becomes a negative fuel that flows into the tank of discontent and ungratefulness. The person I cited earlier is living with these two tanks and the diminishing level of privilege is causing a rise in the discontentment. Garrison Keeler, tells a story of a grandmother who was walking with her 5-year-old grandson on the beach, when suddenly a rogue wave comes up and grabs that child and carries him out to sea. She looks up to the sky, holds her fist and says, “God, this is unacceptable, unbearable. You cannot take an innocent child.” And just as those words come out of her mouth, another rogue wave comes and deposits the child smiling back at her feet. She picks up the child in her arms, looks up to the sky and says, “This child had a hat!” We can choose to live with an overflowing tank of privilege and gratitude or spend our time finding more fuel to validate our discontent and ingratitude and miss the blessings and miracles along the way. Helen Keller was an amazing woman who was deaf and blind from her earliest years. She said; "I have often thought that it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time early in adult life. The darkness would make them more appreciative of sight; silence would teach them the joys of sound." The bible reminds us to “…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) John Henry Jowett, a British preacher of an earlier generation, said this about gratitude: "Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic." He meant that gratitude, like a vaccine, can prevent the invasion of a disgruntled, discouraged and discontent spirit. Like an antitoxin, gratitude can prevent the affects of the poisons of cynicism, criticalness, and grumbling. Like an antiseptic, a spirit of gratitude can soothe and heal the most troubled spirit and begin to fill the tank of privilege again. Increased gratitude is essential for lifetime growth.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues, but the parent of all others.” (Cicero).
Gratitude increases the appreciations and privilege factor in our lives.

It also diffuses arrogance and pride and diminishes entitlement. Henry Ward Beecher said: “A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets what he deserves.” It seems to me that hearts are growing with a sense of entitlement. I think we've all known people whose success in life is held back by a sense of entitlement. Their attitude is: "The government owes me; my parents owe me; the company owes me, my church owes me." We've probably all known children who, after being deluged with extravagant gifts on Christmas Day, look up from the piles of wrapping paper and say, "Is this all?" A lack of gratitude—and the sense of entitlement that often come along with it—drains the life out of a person and our privilege tank – it ruins their happiness and raises discontent. Gratitude and privilege really are the keys to living a rewarding life. Amidst the shopping, the leftovers, the thoughts of all that may be wrong with our world, our community and even your life – look for all that is right and be grateful. “If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never have enough.” “How happy a person is depends on the depth of his gratitude.” John Miller. Enjoy the season.
I am privileged to pastor such a great church and live in such a great community,
Pastor Bernie