Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

“I pray for you, that all your misgivings will be melted to thanksgivings. ~Jim Elliot

Today, we offer fresh-brewed gratitude.

We won’t serve God the sentimental leftovers of olden days, when life saluted us with cheerful favor, when headlines were benign, when custom-order blessings appeared daily at our doors.

Gratitude is not reserved for moments when the sun beams on our dreams.

Especially when bad news blurs and ill-winds batter, we turn from lament for this one day. We deliberately savor the warmth of a sturdy love, of mercies delivered new every morning, even when we forget to notice.

God deserves and delights in our gratitude, for our sake, not for his.

For he knows we weary our souls with relentless complaint. He hears our self-pitiful moaning, for our state, so alone and unloved. He watches as dank dungeons of bitterness become our second home. Deaf to his whispers of hope and redemption, we sink beneath our worry, so he throws us a life-saving line, In everything give thanks, for this is my will for you.*

So, today, untether your expectations, and let God be the only definition of good.

In the end, we will realize even desperate moments were soaked with grace. The people who annoyed and distressed us will turn out to have been our best tutors. The hostile divisions, the what-ifs we dreaded, the ideas that outraged us, will scatter in the face of incomparable Love.

In one great “Aha!” we will be made new.

Someday. But today, if we are grateful, we rehearse who we will someday be.

On this day, pour some fresh-brewed gratitude, and offer it to God.

Thanks for prayers that you have answered,

Thanks for what you have denied.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all you have supplied.

Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace that none can measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

(Adapted from the hymn, Thanks To God For My Redeemer, by August L. Storm)