Gratitude Is a Gift

By Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman, Pastor

With one week until election day, sitting in the place between fear and hope, between exhaustion and determination, I am reminded how consistently throughout the stories of our faith the people of God gave thanks.

They gave thanks for harvests and victories, for children and land.

They gave thanks for blessings and safety.

And in exile and captivity they gave thanks for God’s continued presence and the promise of a future.

In a recent lectionary reflection Diana Butler Bass compared gratitude to salt. Because, as good chefs know, salt is something that should be added to food as it cooks so that it can do its work of changing the flavor and texture of food from within.

Just so, with gratitude. It is not an herb to be sprinkled on the top of things to cover the flavor. But the one ingredient that allows the flavor of all the other ingredients to be enhanced: “genuine gratitude, deep gratitude, is more like salt. It changes us from within.”

A practice of gratitude is not an attempt to force ourselves into a feeling of warmth about things that are hurting or frightening us. It is, instead, the practice of pausing, even when things are hard, to see and feel and remember the things for which we are genuinely grateful. To notice and give thanks. Not as a way to “balance out” or deny the difficult things of life, but as a way to tell the whole truth, as a way to reconnect with our own inner spirit and with the Spirit of Love in the world. A way to rest when we are weary and a way to build our resilience.

Gratitude is a gift.

If you're grateful, you're not fearful. And if you're not fearful, you're not violent.

If you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share.

If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and are respectful to everybody.

And that changes the power pyramid under which we live.

— Brother David Steindl-Rast, Ted Talk on Gratitude —

I think that's exactly what Jesus was saying. The power pyramid under which we live is the thing that makes us anxious and ungrateful. It is what embitters our souls. Fear, scarcity, and bigotry sap the flavor from life — as we try to survive in what is really and truly an unfair, unjust, and cruel world.

But gratitude draws out what resides within us. Deep inside, we are profoundly aware that God has gifted the whole of the universe, that this life is a gift, and our lives are surrounded by gifts. That changes everything.

— Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, September 28, 2024 —

In anxiety and weariness; in hope and resilience; in deep gratitude.