Gratitude

I remember as a kid hearing the story from Luke (Luke 17:11-19) where Jesus heals 10 men, and only one turns back to thank him. At the time, I thought that maybe Jesus was upset by this because the other nine men had been rude – saying “thank you” is only polite. If one should be polite to anyone, then one should certainly be polite to God.

I have a different view of the passage now that I’m older. I don’t think it is so much about saying the “magic word.” (You have to be a Mr. Cartoon fan to understand that reference.) I think there is much more to it than that.

A few years ago, the committee of which I am a member organized a series of dinners and classes on Wednesday night – seven weeks of family dinners, followed by events for children, youth and adults. The “fly in the ointment” was that at the time we did not have a “church hostess” – that wonderful staff member who cooks meals and then cleans the kitchen. Our DCE, who was one of the staff members on our committee, arranged for the church hostess of a neighboring Methodist church, who was already preparing meals for her church’s Wednesday night dinners, to fix “extra” for our church. That left it up to us to get the food transported about a block and then served in our social hall. This sounded simple; it was not.

In order to have the food hot when it arrived, we were always cutting it close between delivery and serving. Sometimes we would find out at the last minute that some part of the meal needed final preparation – like the night when we had tacos and realized 10 minutes prior to serving that the shells needed to be baked. Sometimes we would have too much of one item, and not enough of another. Always, the last 15 minutes prior to serving were WILD – running around trying to get everything down the stairs to the kitchen and then prepared for serving to the group.

To tell the truth, I was resentful. Here I was in a commercial kitchen, supposedly in charge (but feeling completely out of control – hate that). I didn’t know how to work any of the commercial appliances. Have you seen a commercial dishwasher? NO idea how to make it run. The oven? A mystery. And the stove is GAS – that means FIRE! The DCE, who I thought was supposed to be working with me on this, spent less and less time in the kitchen each week (Now, in her defense, she was also running the youth program at the same time – I mean EXACTLY at the same time.) I received conflicting messages regarding who was in charge of clean up, so that was another mystery added to the pile. See what I’m doing? Complain, complain. It was not a pleasant seven weeks.

After it was over, I sat down to write thank you notes to the people who had helped. Maybe it was that old, “not saying thank you is rude” motivation, but I felt like it was important to let each person know that his/her work had been appreciated. So I wrote out cards. Cards to those who had picked up and delivered the food. Cards to those who had helped to prepare it when it arrived. Cards to those who had served it, and cards to those wonderful darlings who had cleaned up the messes. WOW. I was amazed at how many people had pitched in to help. I no longer felt resentful, but grateful.

Why do we need to say thank you to God? So far this morning I’ve come up with three reasons:

1. God is God. If he wants thanksgiving, who are we to question? (Can you see I’m still reading Job?)
2. God is God, and he is deserving of thanksgiving.
3. God is God. He made us, and has a pretty good idea how we work. When we say “thank you” – to God or to each other – we develop an attitude of thanksgiving. We feel gratitude. God wants our thanksgiving because he wants us to live in gratitude, not in resentment. After I wrote all those cards, I realized how much love and support had gone into those seven weeks. I was blinded to it by my resentment, but once I saw it, it was beautiful.

A minister once said to me, “You (meaning people in general, not me in particular) shouldn’t need recognition if you know that you are doing the will of God.” I would change that to be that we should not allow recognition to be our motivation to do the will of God. I’ve avoided saying this throughout this entire post, because it sounds so corny, but we need an attitude of gratitude. Some people need to hear “thank you” – it can be the confirmation that is needed to allow them to believe that what they are doing is making a difference – that their actions have worth and value. But sometimes the greatest benefit of the words “thank you” is to the person who says them. We say thank you to God in recognition of his Godliness. We say thank you to each other in recognition of our God-like-ness. The blessings of gratitude are not one sided.