Loose your lungs!
Get loud for Yahweh, all earth.
Give yourself to Yahweh without holding back.
As you sing,
You’ll find yourself
In his Presence. …
Every day is Thanksgiving for us.
Every day we get to speak our gratitude to him.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 100, pages 226-227)
There is more right with the world than wrong with the world, and I need to see life through the lens of gratitude.
My body works well. Mostly. Most of the time.
I get to breathe clean, fresh air. Mostly. Most of the time.
I love and get along with my family and coworkers. Mostly. Most of the time.
I have a home and good food on the table. I get along with my neighbors. The sports teams I support win a lot. There is music and beauty and kindness woven throughout my life. I have real friends I can lean on and who lean on me.
Goodness abounds.
The world is the theater of the glory of God. As much as there are things wrong in the world, there is so much more that is right. There is goodness. There is truth. There is beauty. Yes, there is badness, falseness, and ugliness, but they pale in comparison to the good, the true, and the beautiful. As Doug Pinnock sang, “Darkness is just a speck in the light.”
This is the world we live in. What is right should overshadow what is wrong. But the way we experience the world is often exactly the opposite. We experience it like a stubbed toe. When I stub my toe, the rest of my body may be healthy and whole, but the pain of my toe shouts so loudly I feel like everything is falling apart.
In a world of stubbed toes, it’s important to pray our pain and the pain of others around us. But prayer shouldn’t and won’t let us stop with what’s wrong. Prayer gives us eyes to see everything that is right. And the more we see what’s right, the more thankful we become.
While it’s vital to see those who are hungry, it’s equally vital to see the goodness of those who feed the hungry and the goodness of the majority who have plenty to eat.
While it’s vital to reject the lies of politicians and people trying to sell us empty ideas, it’s equally vital to celebrate the truth all around us and especially the truth of God and his Word. Because of all this truth, we are able to live trusting and trustworthy lives. We couldn’t function in a world where lies accounted for a tenth of the things we heard.
While it’s vital to see all that is broken and ugly and unmaintained in order to repair and restore them, it’s even more vital to see the beauty of a smile or a sunset or a well-working machine or a piece of art. There is color and sound that can be chaotic and riotous, but there are even more sights and sounds that make the heart sing.
Prayer has the ability to soak in what’s right with the world and say “Thank you” for them all.
Prayer: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everywhere I go: Thank you. Everything I see: Thank you. Every sound I hear: Thank you. Everyone I meet: Thank you. I move from grace into grace, from gift to gift. This world is filled with your wonders, brimming with your presence and your love. I swell with gratitude as I bathe in your goodness, the greatest being the gift of yourself, Jesus. Amen.
For further reading: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, Thomas Nelson, 2011.