by Kim Thoday
Gratitude is the soil out of which other great Christian virtues grow. Cicero said: “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
Gratitude is a journey of accepting and appropriating the giftedness of life. Gratitiude is the journey of discovery of meaning and purpose within all creation from the subatomic world of quantum mechanics to the ever expanding universe of general relativity.
Gratitude is a life intentionally dedicated to the service of humankind. Gratitude is my friend and mentor, Bruce McIntosh, who dying from cancer, gave thanks for his life as an opportunity to serve his Lord and who, asked me not to pray for him but to concentrate my prayers on the children in the same hospital who were struggling with cancer.
Pastor Rinkart, a seventeenth-century German minister, buried five thousand of his parishioners in one year mostly as a result of the plague; that is, an average of about fifteen per day. Despite his terrible experiences of disease and war he wrote this table grace for his children which has become one of the great Christian anthems:
Now thank we all our God With hearts, and hands, and voices, Who wondrous things hath done, In whom His world rejoices; Who, from our mother’s arms, Hath blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today
O may this bounteous God Through all our life be near us, With ever-joyful hearts And blessed peace to cheer us, And keep us in His grace, And guide us when perplexed, And free us from all ills In this world and the next!
And praise and thanks to God The Father now be given, The Son, and Him who reigns With Them in highest heaven – The one, eternal God, Whom earth and heaven adore; For thus it was, is now, And shall be evermore.
Near the end of his life Jesus was with his friends and disciples in the Upper Room. They were sharing the Last Supper together before his arrest and execution. He took bread and broke it and then took a cup and filled it with wine and then he gave thanks! With the prospect of a cruel and certain death, Jesus’ heart was filled with gratitude to a heavenly Father whose love not even death could conquer.
A Christian gratitude is the experience of unconditional love and the hope and assurance that beyond death is resurrection and life. Apostolic tradition asserts: “He became what we are, so we could become what he is.” Surely this is the greatest reason of all to be grateful.
Blessings in Jesus’ name,
KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
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