Be thankful in all circumstances.
This is what God wants from you.
Leviticus 19: 16-18
I Thessalonians 5:15-18
Thanksgiving has become the most universal of our holidays,
Many of us will be
gathering with families to stuff ourselves, “enjoy” family stories and
an afternoon of merriment and familiar foods.
True, in recent years
our celebrations have less and less to do with our traditional
understanding about our reasons for Thanksgiving in the first place. We
have long ago given up reading the annual Presidential Proclamation as
we have realized the Pilgrims were giving thanks for something
completely out of sync with the scenario we learned in school.
In
recent years, I have capitalized on the cultural celebrations of this
season by introducing congregations to theological reasons for
celebrating this holiday that have nothing to do with the images we have
imprinted in our collective minds.
For me Thanksgiving is not just for one day out of the year,
but Thanksgiving is very basic to how we see and understand our faith.
Indeed,
the most basic part of our faith, the Ten Commandments given to Moses
on Mt. Sinai, begins with a thanksgiving for the faith that our
forefathers and mothers gave witness to.
Paul could write to the believers in Thessalonia,
“Be thankful in all circumstances.
This is what God wants from you.”
And, it is a message you and I need to hear:
“Be thankful in all circumstances.
This is what God wants from you.”
Now,
we can say that thanks giving is a good thing, and perhaps we can buy
into the scripture study that tells us that God wants no sacrifice
without thanks giving,
but, these days social scientists are
collecting mounds of evidence that promotes positive affects of giving
thanks at all times for all things.
The evidence mounts:
People who make simple exercises of thanksgiving as a way of life,
people who make thanks giving into thanks living,
people who have an "attitude of gratitude"
are in better physical health,
sleep better,
have lower levels of stress hormones in their blood,
and are happier than those who don’t.
One contemporary writer declares:
“The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us.”
Thanksgiving
may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty
of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns.
But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks.
Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health,
sounder sleep,
less anxiety and depression,
higher long-term satisfaction with life
and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.
A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked.
“Be thankful in all circumstances.
This is what God wants from you.”
Of course, it is difficult for us to be thankful at all times, isn’t it?
But,
time and time again, evidence piles up with personal testimony to what
can happen when folks purposely change their behavior and look for
things to be thankful for – even when times are tough, and it seems
there is nothing to be thankful for.
But, today, there is good news to be heard.
There are many research projects today that have developed techniques and tools we can use to help us in our task to
Be thankful in all circumstances.
Work at the University of California and at the University of Miami
teaches
what can happen when a person does something as simple as taking an
inventory and writing down five things for which you are particularly
grateful - simple things, little things, big things - like a friend’s
generosity, perhaps;
or something you may have learned,
or a sunset you enjoyed.
The gratitude journal they suggest is brief —
just one sentence for each of the five things —
and as they teach it, it is done only once a week,
but after two months there are significant effects.
Time and time again, people keeping the gratitude journal are more optimistic
and feel happier.
They report fewer physical problems
and spend more time physical exercising in some fashion.
A
study of polio survivors and other people with neuromuscular problems
showed that folks who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling happier
and more optimistic than those in a control group,
and these reports were corroborated by observations from their spouses.
These grateful people also fell asleep more quickly at night,
slept longer
and woke up feeling more refreshed.
“If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep,” the researcher advises in his book on gratitude research.
“Be thankful in all circumstances.
This is what God wants from you.”
And it is also has great benefits for us.
In
an experiment at Northeastern University, researches sabotaged each
participant’s computer and arranged for another student to fix it.
That was the test.
Afterward, the students who had been helped were likelier to volunteer to help someone else —
a complete stranger — with an unrelated task. Gratitude promoted good karma.
And if it works with strangers ....
Now, the thing is, we can try it out.
You don’t have to take my word for it.
You don’t have to sit there and think, “well, that sounds nice, Preacher, but it’s not very realistic."
Well, I’m here to tell you it works!
No matter how dysfunctional your family, gratitude can still work, says a researcher at the University of California, Riverside.
Just try it out, she says.
On one day
“Do one small and unobtrusive thoughtful or generous thing for each [person you meet]
“Say
thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture. Express your admiration
for someone’s skills or talents — wielding that kitchen knife so
masterfully, for example.
And truly listen, even when your [uncle Bob] is boring you again with [that same story he tells over and over again].”
Don’t counterattack.
If you brace yourself for insults, consider a recent experiment at the University of Kentucky.
After
turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it
while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays
I’ve ever read!”
Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation.
The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser.
Not
surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics
by subjecting them to especially loud blasts — much louder than the
noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations.
But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students:
the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful.
After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism —
or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics.
“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky.
“It [actually] helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy.
“It’s an equal-opportunity emotion.
Anyone can experience it and benefit from it,
even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”
Why does gratitude do so much good?
“More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” one researcher says.
“It
is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their
estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person.
Gratitude
is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize
that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”
Another exercise you can try is called a gratitude visit.
This
exercise, devised by folks at the University of Pennsylvania, begins
with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the
better.
Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you.
Deliver it in person, (but safely) preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about.
When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor.
“You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”
Be thankful in all circumstances, our Book says.
This is what God wants from us . . .
Worshiping in a local church on a regular basis
can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments at Baylor University.
Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.
One person speaks about how keeping a gratitude journal has affected her life.
She has been suffering from fibromyalgia and had become quite overwhelmed by the constant pain in her life.
And, she took the challenge of using a gratitude journal on a regular basis.
Every night as part of her bedtime routine, she would try to list five things she was particularly thankful for.
She writes:
“Sometimes I struggled to find 5 things for which I was grateful;
occasionally, one of those was, ‘I'm grateful this day has ended.’
But I stuck with it.
Gratitude is not about "looking at the bright side" or denying the realities of life.
Gratitude goes much deeper than that.
It's about learning from a situation,
taking the good to help deal with other challenges in the future.
It's about finding out that you have more power over your life than you previously imagined.
You can stop being a victim of your circumstances and reach out to the joy in living.
If you open your heart to the good in your life, gratitude becomes as much a part of your life as breathing.
I have found joy at every turn, from appreciating the beauty of nature to improved relationships with family and friends.
I still have muscle pain and fatigue.
Those symptom levels remain fairly constant.
But that journal opened the door to unconditional happiness with the hand I was dealt.
I can look beyond the pain and fatigue and look forward to each day and the joy it will bring.”
“Be thankful in all circumstances,” our Book says.
This is what God wants from us . . .
When we live with an attitude gratitude
things change for us.
Things actually change for us.
And it is real.
You can feel it when it happens.
And, when you do, nothing short of a miracle happens.
“Be thankful in all circumstances,” our Book says.
This is what God wants from us . . .
Amen.
