Gratitude is such an odd sensation. It often comes with a
sense of relief usually because we are experiencing some boon that was not
expected…relief from sorrow, a special kindness, an extravagant gift.
However we in North America seem to experience thankfulness
less and less and more often replace it with an attitude of entitlement. There is
a sense that we deserve the best of people and require their respect and honour
while doing very little to merit it. We have so much that so many don’t have.
I have traveled too much (and not the five star travel) not to know how privileged we are to live in a country in which we are enabled to feel entitled…that in itself is such a freedom. We are able to live without restraint…to speak our mind, worship in peace, and choose our lifestyle without judgement and if we are judged/restrained, to have an avenue for dispute.
We live also in such affluence. Even the poorest in my
country and city would count among the richest in the world. And they would
have access to social programs should they need or want them at any given time.
This is a luxury as well. Even the homeless are free to live in the manner they
have chosen or fallen into. Please, I am not judging the homeless in our
country/city or the reasons/situations that cause their homelessness and I am
even compassionate over their circumstances and don’t begrudge them the access
to many programs that they have. I revel in the fact that our country provides
for them. And the wealthy in North America, are among the wealthiest in the
world, and often the most generous with their wealth. But I would guess that
they have little understanding of the impact of their generosity as it often comes
at such a distance from the gratitude it elicits.
My greatest thankfulness has come at the moment when I have
looked poverty in the real face of it…physical poverty, spiritual poverty,
poverty of mind…an elderly woman offering me mate tea outside her brick hovel
in the Argentine desert, a homeless, jobless African American man, singing in
the streets with me in inner-city Chicago, a Cambodian university student struggling
to pay tuition on her $1/hour job and her neighbour whose brother was sold into
slavery so her siblings could have clothing and food, a Muslim woman on a port
in southern Spain afraid to take an Aramaic bible for fear her husband would be
angry, a young father in Eastern Europe struggling to provide for his family on
a currency devalued by half and frustrated over a system that would put his
brother in jail without trial for speaking his mind.
In these situations, my selfish heart cries out in
gratitude, ‘Thank you, God that it is not me!’ And that is my greatest relief,
the great boon from my Father, the gift of grace that I do not deserve. That I
should live where I do, that my husband cares for me and supports me, that my
children have the freedom to be and say and do what they will, even in
entitlement, that my home is strong and safe around me and is warm in winter
and cool in summer, that my table is laden, that I have work that appreciates
me in attitude and salary, that I and my family have access to education of all
kinds and that within it we are taught to develop our own thought process, that
I have a government that will support me out of country, that I can trust my
police force to protect me, that I have access to the best health care system
in the world and to a countryside so grand in its beauty and space,
such wide open underpopulated space. And that I may worship freely the God that grants me the benediction of it all. I am blessed beyond measure without deserving
ANY of it and in the moments I recognize it fully, I weep with gratitude in such relief and with the extravagance of it.
And so my gratitude comes with the burden of responsibility.
What I have and what I have access to, I must somehow share it…with whoever
crosses my path. I must work to dole out the blessing and multiply the
thankfulness I feel. I often fail at it and sink into entitlement or complacency,
but the goal is that, more often than not, my response in appreciation for what
has been granted to me will be more generous than it was the day before.
