Welcome to “World Gratitude Day”

September 21 is World Gratitude Day. The idea started in 1965 when an international gathering in Hawaii decided it would be a good idea to designate one day a year to formally express gratitude and appreciation for the many wonderful things in the world. (Having been privileged to visit Hawaii, I can see why people gathering there would be grateful.)

However, the attendees kept to their commitment even after they returned home, wherever that was, marking September 21, 1966, as Gratitude Day. Advocates tell us that gratitude can lead to a safer and better workplace: when employees feel appreciated, they are more likely to be engaged and focused in their work, contributing to a reduction in errors and accidents.

We’re told that gratitude triggers the brain’s reward system, producing tangible physical and mental health benefits. It reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, improves sleep and social bonding, and even benefits our immune system.

Psychologists, therefore, encourage us to take a few minutes every day to think about what we are grateful for. We might stand in front of a mirror each day and think of five good things we appreciate about ourselves. We can record reasons for gratitude in a journal and write thank-you letters, emails, or other messages to others to express grateful feelings. Gratitude can also be part of our regular spiritual practices.

As a theologian, I know that gratitude is not only a good idea but a God idea:

• “This is the day that the Lᴏʀᴅ has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
• “Give thanks to the Lᴏʀᴅ, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 136:1).
• “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28).

This command is especially relevant and has formed the text for countless Thanksgiving sermons over the years: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). No matter our circumstances, we are to express gratitude to God “in” them. Scripture enjoins us to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

So far, so good. But there’s a verse on our subject that bothers me greatly, one I need to explore with you today.

“Give thanks always and for everything”

Paul encouraged the Ephesians to be “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father” (Ephesians 5:20, my italics). I understand giving thanks “in” all circumstances. But giving thanks “for” them?

David didn’t seem thankful when he prayed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1), words Jesus would repeat a thousand years later from the cross (Matthew 27:46). Job didn’t seem grateful when he “cursed the day of his birth” (Job 3:1). Jesus didn’t seem thankful when he agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane and cried in anguish from the cross. Paul didn’t seem thankful when he pleaded repeatedly with the Lord to remove his “thorn in the flesh.”

Some acts in our fallen world are objectively evil. How could we possibly give thanks for murder, child abduction, or sex trafficking? Some people are the very picture of evil as well. Should Jews who lost loved ones in the Holocaust be grateful for Hitler? Should Americans still grieving those they lost at 9/11 be grateful for Osama bin Laden?

But then I put Paul’s statement in its larger context:

Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:18–20).

Here we find the help we need to be the grateful people we need to become.

“God meant it for good”

To be “filled with the Spirit” (v. 18) means to be submitted fully to his lordship, asking him to take control of our minds, attitudes, words, and actions. This is a present-tense imperative, literally translated as “be continually being surrendered to the Spirit.”

When we are submitted to him in this way, we then have the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16) and are empowered to see the world as he does. In his providential purpose, every circumstance and event, even the most painful and horrific, can be redeemed for a greater kingdom purpose. As I often state, God redeems all he allows.

You and I cannot always (or even often) understand such redemption in our fallen, finite minds, and we may not see or comprehend it on this side of paradise. But we can know that our sovereign Lord allows all that happens and that his omnibenevolent grace requires him to use it for greater good.

In that sense, even when we cannot and should not be grateful for the evil itself, we can be grateful for the ways God will redeem it. Joseph is a good example: he never expressed gratitude for his slavery and mistreatment by his brothers, but he could say to them, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

When we are connected with the Lord in worship through “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” we are better able to sense his love and trust his providence. And when we give thanks “for everything” to God “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” we do so in prayer that seeks to advance his kingdom and assert his lordship.

“Transcendent moments of awe”

I’ll close with a personal question: What in your life is most difficult to give thanks “for” today? Name that pain or problem. Submit it to your Father and ask his Spirit to control and guide you as you respond to it. Thank him in advance for redeeming it for his greater glory and your greater good.

Then stay in a spirit of expectation and gratitude, not for the pain but for the Provider who heals, not for the suffering but for the Savior who grieves as we grieve and hurts as we hurt. John Milton observed: “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

Let us seek such “moments of awe” today, to the glory of God.