What do you have to be thankful for? Do things like your car, home, or family come to mind? What about the things that make us grow? What about the struggles and hardships that shape our lives and redefine our character? Do we remember to be thankful for those things as well?
I admit that thankfulness in the middle of struggle doesn’t come naturally. In fact, at times it has felt insincere at best and a betrayal to my pain at the very least. Thankfulness and struggle don’t naturally go together. But we aren’t called to live by nature’s standards.
We were created to be higher than this natural world we live in. We were created in God’s image and, with His help, we can respond to life with grace and faith. In his book, The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.” How can we not be thankful for times that bring us closer to God? While I would not want to relive the hardest times of my life, I would not want to forfeit the lessons I received because of them either.
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 says, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands.
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” When you feel like you are lost in the forest of uncertainty or pain, remember that this too serves a purpose.
Remember that God can do things that no one else would have thought of to preserve you during this time. Let us be a people who are thankful in good times and bad because we know that the bad, when placed in God’s control, always leads to good. And so, I am thankful for it all.
Im thankful for Gods amazing grace into my life