on March 29, 2025
Dear all at IPC,
In spending time with an older Christian Minister recently, I’ve been struck by how thankful he is. His circumstances are difficult, he is fast approaching the end of his life, and his health is deteriorating. The temptation of loneliness and feeling sorry for oneself is there; but overwhelmingly, he is characterised by being thankful.
In reflecting on this, his thankfulness has not suddenly come upon him. It is not as if he has started being thankful in his nineties. It is a practice that has been part of life, which is now bearing fruit in old age. The truth is, what we are in old age is the product of what we’ve been throughout our lives.
When we come to thinking about gratitude in scripture, we find that it is both a spontaneous reaction, but also a command. Hannah, David, Miriam, the Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and many of the Psalms all express thankfulness naturally and spontaneously. The response of their hearts overflowed with words of gratitude. We see that in normal life when we are given a gift that we really appreciate and want – our words express our natural thanks. It is, we hope, a gut reaction to be thankful.
The Bible, however, also commands us to be thankful:
“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” 1 Timothy 4:4
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 6:16. Paul tells us in Colossians to be “abounding in thanksgiving”.
In the Old Testament, the people of God are instructed, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!” (1 Chronicles 19:13). This command of the Lord is echoed again and again through the Psalter.
One of the marks of the people of God in every age is we are to be thankful.
If thanksgiving is to be both spontaneous but also commanded, it means that when we are not feeling grateful – which, if truth be told, is quite a lot of the time – we are to stir ourselves up to thankfulness. I think that part of the answer is recognising that ingratitude and not being thankful, is not neutral, but is actually sinful.
My friend in his 90s has made it his pattern for decades to begin each day writing down what he is thankful for. The simple things, the regular things, the daily things, the bread and butter of life, but also then the out-of-the-ordinary things. He then moves on to the things he is grateful for in Christ. He has taken literally the hymn, “Count your blessings, name them one by one”.
I suspect that most of us are unthankful because we are forgetful. We don’t recognise that all that we have is given to us. 1 Corinthians 4:7 asks us, “What do you have that you did not receive?”. The answer to the question is: nothing. The smallest of mercies, the things we so often take for granted: it is all a gift, all of grace. When we forget that everything we have comes from God, there can easily creep into our hearts an entitlement. ‘I am not being treated fairly, this situation shouldn’t be like it is, and I am being wronged’. We certainly see that pattern in the children of Israel in the wilderness.
When I was a boy, we would occasionally sing grace at the table, “All good gifts around us are sent from above, then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all his love”. It rightly expresses the biblical truth that all we have, whether that is a lot or a little, is given to us by God’s hand.
It requires humility to be thankful. Thomas Charles writes, “We must first be made truly humble before we can be truly thankful… when we are little in our own eyes, every mercy is great”. In recognising our creaturelihood and also our sinfulness, we will then be able to recognise all God’s dealings with us with thankfulness. It will stop in us that feeling that somehow, we are missing out, that God has given us a raw deal. As I’ve often said in the past, thankfulness is what drives out grumbling in our own lives and in church life.
It is, however, for the Lord Jesus Christ that we must be supremely thankful. Paul exclaims, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15). As we meditate on the person and work of Jesus Christ – we will be moved to thankfulness for his kindness, his humility, his gentleness, his obedience, his suffering, his teaching, his authority, his mercy, his power, his judgement, his perseverance, his grace, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his intercession for us, and his coming again in glory. We could go on and on. The taking of time to consider Jesus Christ will move us to thankfulness.
There can also be thanksgiving in suffering, where with the eye of faith, we grasp his working out his good purpose, and there is more to the story than that which we can see. His character guarantees his work, “he is too wise to be mistaken and too good to be unkind”. It is our testimony as God’s people that we can give thanks even amidst tears.
Psalm 50:23 tells us that, “the one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me”. What a wonderful thing it would be for us, as a congregation, to day-by-day build into our lives rhythms of thankfulness. Bringing to God our gratitude for all he is and all he has done. John Calvin, commenting on these words, tells us, “that the most acceptable sacrifice in God’s sight is praise, by which we express to him the gratitude of our hearts for his blessings”.
Your Minister and friend,
Paul