I must begin each prayer with thanksgiving. That has become my requirement. Because if I don't, I'll only complain.

There are so many things in life that I find to be irked about. So many things fall short of perfection. So many things are misshapen and twisted; cruelty and perversion abounds.

I have realized that if I don't fall to my knees in gratitude, I will stumble into the murk of despair to rise no more.

And so I begin with thanksgiving; I must, and something peculiar happens when I do. It's like those hidden pictures where until you pull a tab, all is darkness, and then the panels flip and a beautiful image is revealed. It is as though something lost has been restored, something stolen returned, something broken remade.

When I begin my prayer by thanking God for the air I breathe, for the cup of water in my hand, for the wind whipping the strands of hair about my face, I can feel that ever hovering bitterness seep away for a while. That gall which often chokes the joy out of me is gradually melted, when I begin to look up at the glory and lovingkindness with which I am crowned. 

Gratitude has become rather pedantic, these days. I find myself growling every time someone says he's thankful for something, because half the time it's in the context of something happening that he really wanted to happen. Of course he's happy about it. 

But what is gratitude, actually? What kind of power did it have to cause the apostle Paul to be grateful for his imprisonment, or Betsy Ten Boom to encourage Corrie to thank God for the fleas in the concentration camp? How was it that Ahn E. Sook could praise The Creator for a heap of rotten apples, and Job could bless the Lord as everything was wrenched from him?

You see, that's my other beef with modern thankfulness. There is no recipient. 

"I'm thankful I live in America." Says one person. 

"Thankful to whom?" I ask.

"Oh, just thankful," he shrugs.

And it ends there, some sort of twisted, Pollyanna gratitude which takes no notice of Him from whom all blessings flow.

What's the problem with this kind of gratitude? It falls flat on its face when one is in the thick of deep suffering. Suddenly, because our gratitude has been boiled down to a happy feeling regarding the butterflies of life, when the butterflies go so does the pleasant feeling. We are left in despair and cynicism; worse off than before.

Whereas, when there is an object, a recipient of our gratitude, we do not have to let the circumstances of life drive our emotions, because He does not change and vaporize as do the rest. In the midst feeling very disgruntled I can either put on a smile and be thankful in a happy sort of fashion for my food, or, I can turn my eyes to heaven, and soberly thank my Creator that He has always fed me and continues to do so, even in the midst of global madness.

The one focuses on self. The other draws focus out and above oneself, and that is, in part, the reason why thanking God for something helps destroy bitterness. It is how we can thank God for rotten apples, persecution, imprisonment, and fleas, because we know He orchestrates these things for our good not because they are necessarily good, but because He is good.

"Oh Taste and See that the Lord is good." The Psalmist says, and I have to agree. He is indeed very good if we will but taste. In his new year song "Turn Your Eyes to The Light," John Rutter writes two lines which I think are very insightful: "The light was always there, if we could but see it, and warmth was in the air, if we'd known how to feel." 

God is good, and that doesn't change. It is simply our pride, selfishness, and all around God-deafness which often obscures our senses. 

My point is this: Gratitude is not a feeling. It is an expression that must be directed towards something, and we must learn to cultivate it or drown in cynicism and despair. 

That all sounds rather brusque when I put it like that, and you might argue that it's not so clear-cut, it's more nuanced, it depends on the circumstances. 

I disagree. How you react, how you express your gratitude does indeed depend on the circumstances, but the principle, like the law of gravity remains the same. Every single runner in a race at the same place will receive the same percentage of oxygen in his breath, it is how his lungs respond to that oxygen, how his body processes it, which will be unique. However, the important thing is that he breathes. That does not depend on the circumstances and is no more nuanced than the sun or ocean tides.

We must be grateful, and that gratitude must have a recipient. You can choose to thank mother nature, but she has a way of being whimsically cruel. You can thank the universe, but the universe can be deafeningly silent. You can thank your loved one, but sooner or later, he or she will not be enough. Thus I turn to Christ; to the Spirit of grace, to the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. He has buoyed me up beyond my highest expectations, and I have reason to believe that He will continue to do so.

And so I end my prayer as I began it; with a doxology.

        I thought it would be fitting to share the good "Old Hundreth" here as arranged by one of my favorite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Enjoy the introduction by one of the greatest contemporary composers and conductors Sir David Wilcox.

Happy Thanksgiving!