Gratitude

“This is my comfort in my trouble, that your promise gives me life”
Psalm 119:50

I was reading a Scott Peck book (The Road Less Traveled), and read this statement:

“Conversion involves our understanding that everything set before us, no matter what it is, is for our walk towards God.”

Well, we’ve all heard that one. Gratitude begins with our acceptance of our own plight as an opportunity. Yes true. But it’s harder for some, no? If you’re Warren Buffet, sure – grateful. But what if you were, for instance, without any means? If “luck” never seemed to turn your way, if water must be carried from a filthy drinking hole for your children, what then?

And yet, the more challenging our circumstances, the more we can get out of gratitude. An alcoholic begins to turn her life around in the very moment she accepts that she is an alcoholic – “a grateful, recovering alcoholic” as many of them put it.

It seems to me that we have a “both-and” here. Compassion teaches us that our lot may or may not be as bad as others, and the Grace of God teaches us that God is possibility in every minute, in every moment of our existence. Even the terrible ones.

That, by the way, is why we are Anglicans. Because we have both a sane outside process for justice and a fully alive record of God’s Miracles – happening every moment, bringing us closer to Him.

Isn’t it a wonderful, beautiful thing to have moments when gratitude wells up undeniably?

-The Reverend Janet Broderick

Let us pray…

Dear Jesus, thank you for all I have and all I am. Help me show compassion for myself and for others. Amen.