Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Worth quoting: on gratitude

From C. Hassell Bullock, Encountering the Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), p. 162.

The psalms of thanksgiving tap into one of the great spiritual resources of Holy Scripture and offer us a spiritual home where the passions of life can find their moorings in a source outside the human self. One of the great tragedies of the human spirit is to become a prisoner of ingratitude, for ingratitude shuts the human spirit up in a world lightened only by the self, which is no light at all. It creates a dark dungeon of selfishness because there is no horizon to give perspective to an individualistic world. Ingratitude is a closed system that prohibits the individual from opening up to God and neighbor. Gratitude, on the other hand, throws the door to this prison wide open and liberates the soul to thank God for what he has done and to share this spirit of grateful elation with fellow human beings.
In one of my classes at Westminster, I remember my apologetics professor, Dr. Bill Edgar, speaking about someone's salvation experience; I don't recall if he was relating his own, or quoting someone else's. But he summarized it with this sentence: "I finally knew who to thank."

That really stuck with me, as in some ways it mirrored my own experience. I've always loved the natural world, and the natural sciences. As a child and a teen, I marveled at the beauty of the cosmos. When I accepted Christ during my freshman year of a geology major at Colorado State University, it was like going from black and white to color. What had always been a beautiful world, suddenly became indescribably awesome. And I finally knew Who to thank. Worshiping the Creator/Redeemer became the longing of my heart, not some religious obligation.

Gratitude, combined with the joy and freedom of God's total forgiveness in Christ, is life-changing. It certainly changed me!

1 comment:

  1. I really like that thought, "I finally knew Who to thank." Great post.

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