Gratitude—Opening My Hands

by | Jan 29, 2025 | Seeds eNewsletter

NEVER DO I COME EASILY TO GRATITUDE. The prompt to name what I am grateful for tends to trigger a defensive resentment rather than any generous motion of my heart. An exhortation to gratitude in a sermon or in my devotional reading acts similarly — my impulse is to close off, clamp down, rather than open.

 

All Could Be Lost

I think that, in part at least, choosing gratitude is so hard for me because it reminds me that none of the things I am grateful for are things I can count on keeping. My family, my health, my work, my patients, my church, my books, my music, my home, my life — all could be taken from me at any moment. All could be lost. I have seen too many others lose them, and I too have lost. I don’t want to be grateful for all I love at the center of my life; I want all to be promised to me, like gravity.

The exercise of gratitude therefore generally feels much more like a painful admission extracted from me under spiritual coercion than it feels like “the highest form of thought,” as Chesterton put it (1).

 

Simply Accepting the Gifts

I drove out to see a patient late one evening close to Christmas. He had a bad cough, and I wanted to ultrasound his lungs to check for pneumonia (The mobile ultrasound unit was funded by donations to GOOD NEWS Associates, and yes, I am grateful!). When I turned to leave, he and his family stopped me to hand me a gift bag full of tiny treasures. Little packaged snacks for my child’s school lunches or to keep in my car. A plug-in scent diffuser. A pair of gloves. “We’re so grateful for you,” they said.

Usually, I find the gratitude of others even more difficult to manage than my own gratitude. It scalds me with anxiety, feeling like a demand I can never live up to, an expectation I will inevitably fail in. But in that moment, so close to Christmas, I was able to simply accept. I was able to say, “Thank you,” and ,“I’m grateful for you too.” I went back out to my car and tears came to my eyes.

 

Hands Open With Grace

It came to me, then, that gratitude needn’t always be a painful exercise of violently forcing open my clenched hands. I knew that, of course. Perhaps paradoxically, the one thing for which I am always easily able to offer gratitude is the one thing I am utterly sure of never losing — Christ’s love for me, poured out on the cross.

All else passes. All else fails. But my gratitude for those transient things needn’t always be a painful memento mori (a reminder of death). It can be a simple acceptance, a reception, something that—like the gratitude of my patient and his family to me—I am simply given.

I am here. I am loved. I am grateful.

 

(1) Chesterton, G.K. (1874-1936) on GoodReads
(2) Image credit: Liza Summers on Pexels

Director’s Note—Happy Anniversary, Rosemary!

It’s a year this month since Rosemary started up a mobile health care ministry in her area. It was a dream to offer her medical expertise free of charge, helping answer the aching needs she saw at her hospital job. And it’s happening… Happy Anniversary, Rosemary!

She donates her time, but contributions through GOOD NEWS Associates have helped her buy that ultrasound and pay for the necessary electronic records system and insurance. Now she needs additional funds for small practical things like testing kits and bandages—a $500 influx for ongoing expenses.

If you’d like to celebrate this anniversary with us, we welcome your prayers and messages. If it would bring you joy to donate to Rosemary’s ministry efforts, that’d be a great gift too.

Thank you!
Christine Hall
Director, GOOD NEWS Associates