Make Gratitude Your Focus
It’s been a tough year with coronavirus, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and it is going to feel a little different around our Thanksgiving table tomorrow. And you could probably say the same. In some places, COVID restrictions are still in place. People have lost their jobs. Colleges are still closed; their campuses are off-limits. Businesses have failed. Politics are even crazier, and all of this makes for a cauldron of discontent. And for some, downright depression.
Ken Tada has had a rough season with that. Because of my disability, I’ve been pretty much sequestered this whole time, ever since March. It meant he had to do more of my caregiving routines. And to protect me from any virus, he limited trips outside the house. He canceled his fly-fishing trips. And watching the news did not help! All of this weighed heavily on Ken’s spirit and, for a while, he was really in the dumps. He felt overwhelmed.
Now when most people, even most Christians, get hit with hardships, we choose one of the following responses. Some people give up. They shelve their hopes and, like a horse yielding to a heavy harness, they stoically resign themselves to keep pulling the plow of dreary, daily routines. But we’re not animals. It grieves God to see his children live in resignation. Other people make suffering the focus. Some people yield control to their circumstances and not to God. They cave in under pressure, coddling quiet feelings of rebellion. They make their problems the focus, rather than Christ. But there’s one other response. Some people become bitter. Hebrews chapter 12 cautions us, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” When we allow bitterness to take root in our lives, we close ourselves off from the grace God offers. Bitter people make hardships the idol, the main thing. But like Jonah chapter two says, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”
People who give up – even Christians who give up – or people who focus on their own suffering or even become bitter – yes, Christians can become bitter – they separate their suffering from the God who has allowed it, who should be trusted in it. They forfeit the grace God wants to shower on them. And frankly, that was my husband’s problem, at least for a while. But here’s how Ken came up out of it. We started counting our blessings. We started mouthing our gratitude, saying thank you for the smallest of things. That is when depression slowly began to lift off of Ken Tada. For him, it was a powerful lesson on how important gratitude really is. “Great faith does not make the experience merely bearable,” someone once said. “It makes it luminous and instructive. Faith takes the tangled strands of human experience and weaves them into one strong cable of help and hope.”
Yeah, it’s been a hard year, but God is calling us to be thankful. And I pray that tomorrow you and your family will count your blessings around the table. And since it’s Thanksgiving, it’s the perfect time to ask for your free copy of my booklet “A Thankful Heart in a World of Hurt.” Just go to joniradio.org for your gift. “In everything give thanks,” the Bible says. So do not give up; do not make problems the focus, and do not forfeit the grace that could be yours. Instead, count your blessings; and tell us about it at joniradio.org when you stop by and ask for your gift on gratitude. Again, that’s joniradio.org. And Happy Thanksgiving!
© Joni and Friends
A Thankful Heart in a World of Hurt
A Thankful Heart in a World of HurtIn this 14-page pamphlet, Joni helps you cultivate a grateful heart by looking at the wisdom of Scripture. This pamphlet addresses questions like: How can I really give thanks for all things? How can I cultivate a grateful spirit? How is it possible to “Rejoice in the Lord always”?
