The Right Perspective

As many of you know, I recently fell during a hike in the hills of Connecticut and thoroughly jacked-up my foot. There were no broken bones, but plenty of torn ligaments and some serious bone bruising. I’ve been hobbling around on crutches for weeks now, with the promise of more weeks of physical therapy after I get my boot off. Needless to say, the injury was quite disruptive to how I thought the last few months of my life would look. I’ve been held up on the couch for much of it, with my wife having to pick up the slack around the house. It’s been one of those seasons where life literally gets you down. I’m sure we’ve all struggled with seasons like that, where something breaks in and wreaks havoc on our plans or, a million little things we never saw coming, pile up, leaving us exhausted and overwhelmed. In seasons like that, the last thing I want to hear is the importance of gratitude. 

The Importance of Gratitude

And yet, gratitude is important, for it reorients our perspective to be more inline with the wider picture that God has in view. In other words, it helps us stay grounded in reality. I noticed this recently as I was reading through 2 Chronicles. In chapter 5, king Solomon invites all the high officials and leaders of Israel to the consecration of the temple he built in Jerusalem. This is a big moment for the newly crowned king, for this is the first time in history that God is given a permanent temple in which to be worshipped. Since their freedom from slavery in Egypt, Israel has been worshiping God in a tent that followed them through their desert wanderings and into the land of promise, but now Solomon has built God a magnificent temple.

I’m sure it was a wonder to behold, something that the new king could be rightly proud of, but instead of showing off to all the most important people of Israel, he declares his gratitude, ‘“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to David my father,’” (2 Chro 6:4b). Solomon rightly acknowledges that his great accomplishment in building the temple is in fact something that God has accomplished through him. He can be grateful in his success because he realizes that all that he was able to accomplish was based on God’s former promises and His continual faithfulness, namely the promises God made to establish David and his family line as the kings of Israel (2 Sam 7). 

In the same way, gratitude can help us put our successes and setbacks in the right context, that of God’s faithfulness. It reorients our perspective in three directions: it builds confidence as we look back to remember what God has done in the past, contentment as we rest in what God is doing now, and hope as we look forward to what God will do in the future. Even in the most difficult of seasons—when it’s hardest to be content—we can look back and remember, look forward and hope, and so find peace in the frustrating middle. 

The Ultimate Source of Gratitude

Solomon found confidence to lead his people in the promise God gave his father David, but we find our confidence in David’s greater Son, Jesus Christ. In His death and resurrection, Jesus, Son of God, Son of David, took on all the sin and suffering of this world and overcame it. Through death, Jesus brought life. And He promises the same for us. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:55-56, “Death is swallowed up in victory. ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

If you are in Christ, nothing, not even death itself, can thwart God’s love for you because Jesus has won us the victory. Oh do we have so much to be grateful for! If Jesus can turn even death into a source of life, what can He do in the struggles and setbacks we face from day to day? Look back and remember His work on the cross, rest in His presence with you in even the darkest of seasons, and look forward to the day when He will come again to set all things right. As gratitude for the faithfulness of God builds in your life, so too will your confidence, contentment, and hope. This Thanksgiving season, let’s be those who are full of gratitude for all God has done, is doing, and will do.