OPTIMISM AND GRACE

I’ve been thinking how refreshing it is to hear “Thank you!” from someone when you’re not expecting it.  When someone recognizes something we’ve done and they acknowledge it, we feel good.   Feeling good is a blessing.  The flip side of receiving thanks is anticipating thanks and having it happen.  Too often it doesn’t.  Recently, I sent a check to friends who were struggling financially.  It helped them make an important transition.  We’ve had dear ones do the same for us when we were younger.  We felt recently that it was the right thing to do and frankly I was optimistic about a response.  We were not disappointed.  The financial help came at the right time.  It occasioned surprise and relief.  It also occasioned a lovely response of thanks and touched our hearts.

I suppose this is what happens with God.  He pours his grace into our lives every day and waits for our response. The appropriate response is thanks and praise.  We thank him for all the blessings he piles on us from morning to night, and through the night.  We praise him for he is a loving, gracious, awesome God. 

Not everyone and sometimes not anyone remembers to thank God for all the gifts and grace he gives.  Sometimes days, weeks, and months go by before God’s grace is even recognized and then acknowledged.   Often it just doesn't happen.  Why is that?  It doesn’t seem right?  How do we change it?  The Psalmist has an answer.  It is the disposition and habit of thanksgiving.  He writes in Psalm 100, “Come unto the gates with thanksgiving.  Enter his courts with praise.”  This is a picture of pilgrims singing their thank s and praise as they journey up to Jerusalem and enter the temple.  They were expressing their faith that God is ready and willing to bless his people.  Like the people to whom the Psalmist writes, for us to “come unto” is to anticipate, to look for, to be ready to receive.  It is acknowledging that God is faithful.  He blessed us in the past.  He blesses us now.  By faith we anticipated that he would continue his blessings on our behalf.

 Approaching gates with thanksgiving is a great way to live.  It reflects an optimism about God’s grace.  Our thanks for what God has done, is doing, and will do naturally spills over into praise to God for being that kind of God, one who loves us with an everlasting love.  Thanks is always a prelude to songs of praise, and the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of his people.  So, when we give thanks and praise to God, he draws near and we find ourselves in an even more intimate place with him.  What a great way to live!  Thanks and Glory be to God!

Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances 

for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18