There is an old saying that “He who does not see the gift, does not see the giver,” and another tells us that “Yesterday’s gift is already twice forgotten.” We may express appreciation when we receive a gift, but it’s a human proclivity to forget it after a little while; and even important gifts become parts of our everyday lives that we don’t think about any more. We even say something is a “given” if it is accepted and something we no longer need to focus on.
But when the apostle Paul wrote that we should be “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20 ESV), the “always” and “for everything” would certainly seem to include past gifts that we still enjoy rather than only those new ones of which we might be more aware. But human forgetfulness still stops us doing this as much as we should. So how do we make our appreciation stick? There are four things that help:
Give thanks for it. That’s exactly what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 5:20. We need to offer thanks to the One from whom all gifts ultimately come (James 1:17) – no matter who delivers them. And occasionally we need to remind ourselves of the most basic gifts of all. The average human heart beats around 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year, but how many of those mega-micro-gifts have we ever given thanks for? The more we see small gifts, the more we see large ones in true perspective.
Write it down. It may be hard to write down every gift we receive, but complete recording is not the point. The more we think to write down our gifts, the more we become aware of them. Writing down the things for which you are truly thankful at the end of each week in a “gratitude list” gives you a way of keeping the memory and appreciation of them alive.
Tell someone about it. This is easy enough if we have mates, family members or close friends with whom we can talk openly. Naturally, our significant people don’t need to know that we are thankful that we didn’t burn the toast again this morning, but telling others about serious blessings is the opposite of confession – it tells others how good God is and helps them realize the gifts they have.
Share it with someone. By “share” I mean literally share the gift or part of it where this is appropriate. We may not be able to share some of the most basic gifts in life, but then again, sometimes we can. We can share many aspects of our physical blessings by giving part of what we earn, loaning items to people who need them, giving of our time and by sharing in many other ways. If you read through your “gratitude list” every so often, you may find a number of things that are appropriate to share. Whatever it may be, when we share a gift we focus on it and often appreciate it more ourselves.
The more of these basic techniques we employ, the more we appreciate what we have – and the more the appreciation sticks with us. And there is another aspect to this. The more appreciative we become, the more we live our “attitude of gratitude.” * As John F. Kennedy wrote: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
* For more information on biblical gratitude, download our free e-book Living Thanks : A Guide to Growing and Showing Gratitude – also available as an audio book and in other formats – on this website and also here.
There is a sobering but meaningful verse in the Book of Malachi regarding the blessings we have been given. In this scripture God says: “If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name … I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings … because you have not resolved to honor me” (Malachi 2:2).
Notice that Malachi does not say God will necessarily take away our blessings, but that our behavior leads to those blessings becoming curses. Why would this be? Malachi’s words allude to the great “Blessings and Curses” narrative (Deuteronomy 11) in which God reminded ancient Israel that faithfulness and obedience to His laws would result in individual and national blessings – whereas turning from God would lead to many resultant curses. The prophet’s words also have a specific reference to the priests who had become corrupt and were not honoring the God they were supposed to serve – but the principle is one that can apply to all of us, in our marriages, families, careers or finances.
The Bible shows that we can lose blessings or see them become curses for a number of reasons; the Old Testament may even be described as a book of the giving and losing of blessings – from Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden to the expulsion of Israel and Judah from their homelands. Many of the Old Testament prophets elaborate on this theme (see for example, Malachi and Haggai), but it is not just an Old Testament concept. The New Testament also shows we can lose God’s blessings – the fact is stressed throughout the Bible.
Look at a few examples. We can lose blessings by putting them – the physical things themselves – before God. We don’t necessarily do this by making idols of them, but sometimes just by focusing on them to the point that our character suffers and our spiritual lives decline. This idea is found in the words of Solomon: “A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent” (Proverbs 28:20) and Jesus: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). We can miss the point of these scriptures if we think this only applies to avaricious greed and not to letting such things as desire for promotion in our careers or “trying to make a comfortable living” come between us and God. It’s a matter of focus.
We can lose blessings or have them become curses by being unwilling to share them where we can (Romans 15:27, 2 Corinthians 9:9). We can also lose blessings by taking them for granted (Hebrews 12:17). In all these ways, and others, we can fall into the trap that Malachi warns of – that our focus is not on honoring God by keeping him first in our lives.
It’s something we can think about this Thanksgiving season. Is our focus on the blessings or on the One who ultimately gives them? Our Thanksgiving should perhaps be about more than just enjoying our blessings – and the big game of the day. Psalm 50:23 tells us that “Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me” and the principle of offering sacrifices of thanks certainly applies to the Thanksgiving holiday. But Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity not only to give thanks for physical and spiritual blessings, but also to remind ourselves to live our thanks by honoring God, as Malachi urges us to do.
Gratitude may be one of the most important qualities we can develop in this life, yet many Christians do not seriously focus on growing in this area. After showing why gratitude is good for us, both physically and spiritually, our new eBook, Living Thanks: A Guide to Growing and Showing Gratitude, looks at why and how we can increase thankfulness – to not just occasionally give thanks, but to live thanks with the gratitude that God desires to see in our lives.
Living Thanks is available in three electronic formats for reading on any computer or eBook reader. Download your free copy (no registration or email necessary) from our Download page here.
It’s a peculiar aspect of human nature that we remember the bad things that happen in our lives so much better than we remember the good things. We may remember painful events from years ago but forget even the most encouraging things that happened only recently. All too often, our feelings of gratitude wash away like words writen on a sandy beach. It is not that the memory of good things has really vanished in these situations, but that the force of good memories and their effect on us diminish quickly. Bad things that happened in the past can continue to make us feel bad, but good things don’t always continue to make us feel happy or thankful.
There is a prime example of this aspect of human nature in the Book of Exodus. We read that soon after leaving Egypt and witnessing the great miracle that saved them at the parting of the sea: “The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin … on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron” (Exodus 16:1-2).
It took only about one month from the time they were spared from the plagues sent on the Egyptians and freed from total slavery (Exodus 12:2) for the people to become unthankful and complaining. It was an even shorter time since they were saved from the pursuing Egyptians at the Red Sea, yet the very people who had so much to be thankful for had already forgotten the feeling of thankfulness they showed earlier (Exodus 15:1-18) and now exhibited no gratitude at all for the past when they began to concentrate on their current needs.
Understanding how the human mind naturally does repress or fail to remember things for which we should be thankful when new needs come along can help us better understand the Israelite’s apparent lack of lasting gratitude, and it can help us understand a related story from this same chapter of Exodus. After God supplied the need of the people of Israel in the form of manna (Exodus 16:13-31), we are told that he gave Moses instructions to help the Israelites with their memory issues: “… Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt” (Exodus 16:32).
God understands the way our human minds work in forgetting things for which we should be thankful, and this is one of a number of biblical examples in which God gave the people of Israel physical reminders of the things they needed to be thankful for. It’s easy to read over these stories and think of them as applying only to the people in the story, but physical aids to remembering can be just as valuable – and needful – for us today.
For example, in the next chapter of the Book of Exodus, after helping Israel again, God tells Moses to “… “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered…” (Exodus 17:14). Today for many of us simply keeping a “gratitude journal” in a small notebook can make a tremendous difference in our ability to remember the good things in our lives and to be thankful for them. A study conducted in 2005 by Dr. Martin Seigleman at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who every evening simply wrote down three things that went well that day felt increased levels of appreciation and thankfulness. The experiment also showed a very positive result of this activity. People who kept such a journal for as short a time as one week often experienced increases in general happiness for several months afterwards.
It’s a simple enough procedure. Writing down three things a day or, if that is difficult, then writing down at least something for each day of the week, only takes a few minutes of our time, but it can have measurable affects on our ability to remember the good things and to maintain appreciation for them.
Some people find other ways to help them remember things for which they can be thankful, and we discuss some of them in the article mentioned at the end of this post. But whatever method we may choose, utilizing some physical method of enhancing our “gratitude memories” is worthwhile. This is particularly true because feeling and expressing gratitude are only the first two-thirds of true thankfulness. Continuing to remember what we are grateful for is the other. But sometimes it takes a pot of manna or, in our case, some other physical reminder to help us to remember and to truly make gratitude last.
* For more ways to make gratitude last, see “Making Appreciation Stick” on our sister site here.
Twelve thoughts you can read and perhaps tweet this week – each with a point worth thinking about.
The thanksgiving difference: 1) “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” Willie Nelson 2) “Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” William Arthur Ward
Say it with thanks:
3) “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” William Ward
4) “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and give thanks continuously.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thanks beyond things:
5) “Thankfulness includes being grateful for all the problems we do not have.” Anonymous
6) “We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” John F. Kennedy
Gratitude makes us all richer:
7) “Give thanks for a little, and you will find a lot.” Hausa Proverb
8) “Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.” Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
Lives of thanks and giving:
9) “Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our Thanksgiving.” W.T. Purkiser
10) “If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.” W. Clement Stone
Don’t stop now:
11) “Thankfulness expressed today and forgotten tomorrow is like an unkept promise. True thanksgiving never dies young.” Anonymous 12) “My thanksgiving is perpetual.” Henry David Thoreau
“Surely you have granted … unending blessings …” (Psalm 21:6).
Normally, we speak of “counting our blessings” in terms of considering all the good things with which we have been blessed. But for many of us privileged to live in areas where those good things are abundant, “calculating our blessings” with the help of an adding machine or calculator may be more appropriate! In fact, perhaps the analogy is one that holds true for all of us – even those who are less fortunate. This is because when it comes to looking at the blessings we have been given, it is very human for us to look around at what we have in the here and now. Yet when we look back and consider the blessings we have enjoyed over time, for so many of us the numbers begin to require calculating help.
Our perspective begins to change when we realize that many of the things we may take for granted are only occasionally enjoyed by millions. Think, for example, of the statistic that if we can afford to eat three meals a day for three weeks in a row we are among the top 15% of the richest people in the world. Even if they are not starving, we should realize that the majority of people in this world do not get food all the time. But if we take our three meals a day, getting out a calculator and multiplying that number by the number of days in our lives might help us better realize the number of blessings in our lives – in that one area alone.
But the same truth applies in so many areas. The doctor’s and dentist’s visits we may grumble about having to fit into our schedules seem different when we realize the very occasional access so many have to medical or dental care – if they have it at all. If we have a steady job, the number of days for which we get paid adds up quickly compared to those without or unable to work – time for the calculator again. And what about the gift of life itself? The resting human heart beats some 60-80 times per minute. If we try to multiply that rate by a day, a year, or our lifetime so far, we definitely need that calculator.
And so we could go on. But the point of what we are talking about here is obvious enough. For those of us in the United States who wish to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a genuine spirit of thankfulness, we should remember to look further than only at the blessings that surround us on the Thanksgiving table. It’s easy to look around in times of economic downturn or other problems and feel less thankful because we only see the things we have now when we should perhaps try to look more at the blessings we have been given all the way to this point, and the many more that we trust lie ahead.
Perhaps it would be good, as we take stock of what God has given us on the Day of Thanksgiving, to do a little math regarding any one of the ongoing blessings we enjoy. We don’t really need to get out a calculator to try to add up the huge numbers of blessings we all have received, but then again, we could put a calculator on the table this Thanksgiving meal – just to remind ourselves that if we tried to add up all those blessings, we would need it.
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