So let’s be honest. Living lives of gratitude sounds great,
but really there are a lot of barriers to living life with a heart of
gratitude.
For one thing, being able to feel thankful is closely tied
to our ability to perceive fairness in the world.
If we look at the world and compare
our lot with others who have more, we will develop a sense of the world being
unfair, we start to move into envy and bitterness and gratitude becomes
difficult.
Alternately, if we look at the
suffering of people in the world it becomes difficult to thank God for the good
things in our lives. We get the, ‘How can
we praise God for this beautiful day when there was an earthquake in El
Salvador yesterday? Syndrome’ We may feel that if we are committed to
justice and seeing an end to suffering we must be very serious about it, and we
can’t be thankful about something as trivial as a nice day.
Secondly, gratitude is tied to our expectations of the world
and it seems wrong to lower our expectations.
In the church, we sometimes yearn
for the idea community and when you are looking at an ideal, it is hard to be
satisfied with what you have. As though contentment was synonymous with not having
drive or vision, we might decide that being discontent with were we are is the
righteous stance.
Sometimes, we are the giver, who didn’t get gratitude in the
way we expected.
This makes a situation difficult. Even
though we didn’t give out of desire for repayment, when our gifts are not
recognized our relationship and contributions are not validated. Saying thanks
is often an expression of respect for the relationship. When thanks is withheld
or not given in the appropriate supply, a person can feel as though their
relationship is not valued.
Therefore, it becomes difficult to continue
to give out of generosity. When no one expresses recognition of all that you do
behind the scenes, your giving can become begrudged instead of coming from a
heart of generosity and joy.
Sometimes, to express gratitude implies consenting to a
relationship that we are not sure we are ready for or want.
When we accept a gift without
repayment we are in a way, indebted to the relationship and the continuation of
the relationship. Repayment implies that you don’t want to continue or deepen a
relationship with someone, that you’re operating under an exchange for services
relationship.
However, when gratitude is at work without all of these
difficulties, it happens like this:
When you are given a gift that
cannot be repaid, only acknowledged, you become invested into the community’s
future endeavors, which ultimately strengthens relational bonds.
It reminds me of something Jennifer
said to me one time. She said, “I know I can’t repay what has been given to me,
but I know I will have the opportunity in the future to give back.
Concepts and wording in places are borrowed from Christine
Pohl’s book, Living Into Community
