Am I Grateful?

Many parents spend time teaching and training their little children to say, "Thank you." Children forget, and so we want to make them remember.

In our turbo-paced, electronics-driven lives today, it is just as easy for adults to be ungrateful, or forget to be grateful.

Have I thanked God for waking me up to a new day?
Have I thanked a friend for coming to my rescue?  
Have I thanked a colleague for inspiring me? 

I believe that like everything on the path to excellence, gratitude has to be deliberate.  It has to be a choice.

We can choose to wait for something great to come—good health, a promotion, an award, sudden wealth, a rare stress-free day—and be grateful.  Or we can choose to be grateful at all times, no matter what the circumstances are, and enjoy how God assists us in everything we do in life.

To adopt a day-by-day "attitude of gratitude" is a choice that differentiates those who wallow in discontent and those who bask in pleasure over what they have.

If we are grateful for what we have been blessed with, no matter how little compared  to others, the world as God created it will give us more reasons for which to be grateful.   We begin to see the innate goodness in people and circumstances.

On the other hand, if we are bitter about something we suffered through, or about someone who betrayed us, the world as man defiled it, will conspire to give us more to resent.

The act of being grateful proves our faith in a loving God, as we read in many verses in the Book of Psalm, one of which is 69:30—"I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving."

For me, being in a state of gratefulness is being in a state of grace. In this condition, we are made aware of the most important aspect of creation . . . being grateful for who we are and what we can become. 

There have been so many research studies on "How to Discover the Key to Happiness."   The first question the research usually wants to answer is, "Am I happy?" 

Christians suggest that the question be changed to, "Am I grateful?" 

Yes, science continues to prove the theory that Christians already know and practice—"That happiness is not what makes us grateful; it's gratefulness that makes us happy."

This much I have learned through the years: it is not events and circumstances that occur during one's life that determine whether or not one is happy;  it is not wealth and recognition that spell happiness for a person.  It is the conscious and willful choice to be grateful to others for the good that they do, to God for all that we have—and to value the opportunity to simply experience life. 

Maybe we should begin each day with a list of things we need to be grateful for.  On  top of the list is the year that was—including those that kept us grieving and groaning. Because the more we realize how indebted we are to God, the more grateful we will be for anything that we receive.

So when is the perfect time to be grateful? Now.  

(Excerpted from my talk, "Gratitude is a Choice")  

Thank you for taking time to read this.