November 2001

It is so right for us to take time each year to think about thanks giving. Indeed, thanks giving is so much a part of our Christian faith that we should pay much more attention to it than we do.

The Apostle Paul admonishes us to "give thanks in all we do." And, most of us see this as some sort of ideal that we, somehow, always fall short of.

Gratitude is not an attitude we cultivate well, is it?

Even on Thanksgiving, we are more likely to concentrate on the turkey or the television than on giving thanks. But, perhaps we would think differently about thankfulness if we realized its extraordinary power to improve our lives.

One popular writer has proposed a convincing argument that gratitude is nothing less than the key to happiness.

In his recent book, Happiness is a Serious Problem, Dennis Prager writes: ''There is a ‘secret’ to happiness, and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.''

Think about it: All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy.

This is a keen observation, isn’t it? And, I think it helps explain why the Judeo- Christian tradition places such emphasis on thanking God. The liturgy is filled with expressions of gratitude.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, begins the 92nd Psalm. Why? Because God needs our gratitude? No: because we need it.

Learning to be thankful, whether to God or to other people, is the best vaccination against taking good fortune for granted. And the less you take for granted, the more pleasure and joy life will bring you.

If assume that the good things in your life are normal and to be expected, you diminish the happiness they can bring you.

By contrast, if you train yourself to develop the custom of counting your blessings and being grateful for them, you will fill your life with cheer.

Sure, it can be hard to do.

Like most useful skills, it takes years of practice before it becomes second nature. This is one reason, that religion, sincerely practiced, leads to happiness _ it ingrains the habits of thankfulness. People who thank God before each meal, for example, inculcate gratitude in themselves. In so doing, they open the door to gladness.

In a sense, gratitude is an expression of modesty. In Hebrew, the word for gratitude _ hoda'ah _ is the same as the word for confession. To offer thanks is to confess dependence, to acknowledge that others have the power to benefit you, to admit that your life is better because of their efforts. That frame of mind is indispensable to civilized society.

So, be thankful.

Don't take the gifts in your life for granted.

Remember -- as the Pilgrims remembered -- that we are impoverished without each other, and without God.

Whoever and wherever you are this Thanksgiving, the good in your life outweighs the bad. If that doesn't deserve our gratitude, what does?

See you in church,