Gratitude Washes Everything
“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
1 Timothy 4:4-5
We are a couple of weeks from Thanksgiving, well into Advent, but I think there is always something more to be said for gratitude. My wife, whose zeal for seasonal correctness, will likely approve of the sentiment but ask why it hadn’t come when there were fresh leftovers in the fridge. So consider this meditation preparation for the celebration of Christmas.
At Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord. The Son takes on flesh and dwells among us. Lest we rush past this wonder in haste to get to the soteriological meat of Good Friday and Easter, let us first stop and consider the one glorious ramification of this profound miracle. Here in the wonder of discovering that God can eat fish, drink wine, and travel with a guy like Peter is the sanctification of all the things you find yourself surrounded by. Here is the sanctification of tables piled with food. Here is the blessing of enjoying a good soccer (yes, even soccer) match. Here is the sanctification of good laughter and hope-filled weeping. Throw it all in: enjoy a good hike in the mountains, the rhythm of the ocean trying desperately to wash the beach of its sand, and all the varying spaces in between (including the long flat drive across eastern Colorado. Throw in wine and sex and ruddy masculinity and glorious femininity, too (which one must, of course, acknowledge objectively exists in order to enjoy). In other words, the coming of the Son in the flesh means that this stuff is no distraction from the glory God has made you to love and enjoy - it’s part of it.
Contra the gnostics (both ancient and modern), God made this world good, and our sin didn’t leave it unclean and black to its soul. Jesus had skin. He wore clothes. He drank wine. He laughed. He wept. He walked. He told some good jokes…and you should too (especially the wearing clothes bit).
But here is where I want to bring Paul’s encouragement from 1 Timothy 4:4-5 into view. He says, “nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving - for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” The foundation of receiving and enjoying all these gifts is thanksgiving.
The soil out of which all go the good life grows is gratitude. It is the abiding recognition that you have been given, well, everything. Such gratitude grows from the fear of God and hope planted in the gospel of Jesus. Gratitude is the ground itself of all joy. Gratitude is a kind of reorienting disposition that charges the whole of one’s world with grace. And all this gratitude is gratitude that finds us constantly looking to the Maker and Redeemer as thanksgiving’s object.
But there is an unsubtle war going on against such gratitude. Envy corrupts everything: driving political movements, destroying relationships, and unraveling joy. Rather than marveling at the enormous gifts, you have been given (and you have been given many), we long for what we do not have. Pride suffocates the air of gratitude. We look not to the gifts God has given us but to the earnings of our own work. The secular left takes the gifts you have received and renames the blessings of God “privilege,” staining everything with the stench of envy and pride. The secular right has no one to give thanks to and fails to see the created nature of all our numerous gifts. A society incapable of giving thanks to God for his many gifts will be a society starved of joy, overrun with envy, and decimated by pride. And so, we look around and find ourselves amid a cultural moment scrambling to find joy in any dark corner it can, a society where the exaltation of the self and its feelings is paramount and where we are at one another’s throats in a constant swirl of envy (as it’s been said - it’s all in Girard, man.).
But the Christian people are to be a grateful people. A people marked by wonder at God’s kindness not only in our redemption but in a glass of wine, the laughter of our children, the coldness of the water we drink, and the loaf of bread we share. The mark of all Christian communities must be love, but such love can only grow from a people who constantly marvel at the kindness of God towards them. Cultivate such gratitude and express it to our Creator. Teach it to your children. Declare it to your neighbor. Root out all envy by considering God’s gifts. Go to war with pride by acknowledging Gods remarkable kindnesses. And not just the kindnesses and gifts you feel naturally grateful for - but for the objective goods you barely notice or don’t even want. Learn to be like children - learning to give thanks for everything on our plate - even the steamed broccoli. Our God makes all things holy with thanksgiving, cultivated by His word and expressed in prayer. Our worship culminates in the eucharistic meal. We share bread and wine in gratitude to our God. It is the capstone of each and every gathering of God’s people. It is the most fundamental mark of our worship and of the community redeemed by Jesus. We are a people whose highest good and most fundamental work is that of gratitude - to receive from God and confess our thanks.