By Jonathan Keller
Thanksgiving comes and goes (or passes by without a thought because of Christmas’ looming shadow), and our gratitude fades with lengthening nights. Your 50th self-help book, video, or blog about gratitude ends, and your motivation to thank every living thing around you runs dry about five days later.
Why is it so hard to keep up a heart of thanksgiving?
Mixed Messages
While social or sinful factors may rightly explain much of our inability to cultivate practices of thanks, I’d like to focus on just two pieces: mixed messages and mixed efficacy.
With mixed messages, it’s one thing to thank someone who does good toward you. It’s another to thank someone when they have hurt you in the past (maybe even frequently), and a third issue when you expect (probably rightly) future injury from them in the future. Why thank the person who steals my lunch from the work fridge every day? Why thank the kid who ruins my workspace every morning? Why thank my father-in-law who drops passive aggressive remarks at every holiday?
Mixed Efficacy
In previous posts, I spoke of the supposed effects of thanks-giving. Giving thanks supposedly reinforces ongoing relationships between us and others. Giving thanks forms our hearts for future thanks-giving. Or does it?
How exactly does a handwritten note contribute to either of these things? Is there a quota to further my relationship with each person so that they will one day give me a new car? If one person requires 50 thank-you notes, why does the next one need 200? For my own virtue, why is it that I need to make 240 blankets to be able to thank people 5% more often?
Does thanks unclog my pores? Does it reduce my allergies? Does it feel like something, look like something when it works on me?
Overcoming the Challenge of Thanksgiving
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for these questions! Giving thanks produces these effects and more apart from human observation. You know its results far after they’ve planted their roots in you. Decades after you began these practices, you’ll take a step back and realize you’re a far more thankful person than you remember. You’ll wonder, “How in the world did that happen?” The atmosphere around your house or workplace will feel lighter, but you’ll be unable to pin down the moment where it shifted.
The one hope in all this is that God Himself is a God who empowers thanks in His world. By the power of His Word and Spirit, He enables thanks to restore societies and cultivate virtue in people. Mystery upon godly mystery explains how thanks works its magic even in the face of real challenges to it. Flimsy words of thanks in the face of evil people somehow change the world despite apparent failure.
What challenges to thanksgiving present themselves in your life? How might you offer thanks in to the difficult people or circumstances in your life?