Throughout the story of faith, men and women are saved, healed, strengthened, forgiven and redeemed by God. And in every story, the response is the same: a prayer of gratitude. It is the grateful heart that seems, even in time of trouble, closest to God.
The grateful heart of Solomon is worth remembering. God told him he could pray for anything and it would be given to him. All he wanted was wisdom. Solomon stands before his people, and leads them in prayer (1 Kgs 8:55-61). It is a touching image of a king praying with and for his people. His prayer is not a wish list for the nation. It is a prayer of gratitude. God has been generous in faithfulness, love and mercy, even when the people were not faithful. Solomon does not want a day to go by that the nation does not remember to be grateful to God. Thanksgiving, for Solomon, was not one day, but a way of life.
For Jesus, having a grateful heart was an essential characteristic of a disciple. He understood the struggles, the tensions and the worries of the human heart. Yet he offers a caution: it is easy to give power to those things, and to lose sight of the blessings. Jesus brings his disciples out into a field, and implores them to look at the lilies, the birds, the flowers of the field (Mt 6:26-34). He uses the image to remind them that a stubborn, cold, and unforgiving heart will lose sight of God’s loving presence. A heart that remembers where there has been light and strength and joy is the one that experiences God’s saving grace, even in the darkest hour.
Praying grace at the dinner table was once a common, daily ritual. It still is for some, but our fast food, microwave culture has many people leading busy lives. An evening meal, recounting the blessings and the challenges of the day, may seem like a luxury to us. And so we embrace the temptation simply to bemoan, complain, and criticize. We run the risk of forgetting what is really important.
A seventh-grader complained vehemently about having to go to a soup kitchen as part of a Confirmation service project. She went. She served. She discovered: When I finally sorted out my feelings, I thought of all the wonderful things I could do to make these people happier. When we got there, they weren’t anything like what I had expected. They were exactly like you and me. How grateful I was to go.
Perhaps that is where true thanksgiving begins. Gratitude, in the end, is all about attitude. Grace is only amazing when the eyes and the heart are open to seeing that the Spirit will lead, even when we are afraid.
Who will say grace at your Thanksgiving table? In my family, all eyes turn toward me, as my brother insists I am the only professional at the table. Do you skip grace because Uncle Harry doesn’t go for all that religion stuff? Do you forget it because you are in a restaurant, and after all, what would people think? Speaking our grace, our gratitude, must be a part of our daily life, not just on Thanksgiving Day. It does not matter how many people are there, or where we are. Unless we speak aloud our gratitude, we really cannot become grateful people. And if we are not grateful people, we cannot grow as disciples of Jesus.
Magnificat November 2000
