"Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by
3. GRATITUDE CAN BE DEVELOPED "Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food." – John Ortberg Once we realize that there are very powerful physical and spiritual reasons for gratitude and that we are called to develop this quality in our lives, the obvious question we must ask ourselves is "So how do we become more thankful?" This chapter begins the quest to answer that question.
First, we must understand that thankfulness can be developed – gratitude can be grown. The point made in the opening quote bears reflection in this regard. Although the analogy between gratitude and our physical taste buds was not developed further by John Ortberg, it's a comparison that can be profitably explored because we can develop our sense of gratitude in the same way that our sense of taste can be developed.
Taste Buds and Thankfulness Think about this for a moment. Our taste buds, containing the taste receptor cells that allow us to experience pleasure from what we eat and drink, are minor miracles of design and planning. Normally, we may not pay much attention to those tiny sensors, but without them eating even the finest foods would be an experience no different from chewing sawdust or polystyrene packing chips.
But the average human tongue has multiple thousands of tastesensing cells, and although most people are not aware of it, these cells are also found on the soft palate of the mouth, the upper esophagus, the insides of the cheeks, and the back of the throat.
Some people are also naturally blessed with heightened abilities of taste through having a greater number of taste buds than others. These people – representing only about 20 percent of the
population – are known to science as "supertasters." Most of us (about 60 percent of the population) have an average number of taste buds, but another 20 percent of the population is composed of individuals known as "non-tasters" as they have fewer taste buds than average.
But however many taste buds we may have, it is a fact that anyone – even so-called "non-tasters" – can increase their ability to recognize a great many flavors. That ability to develop our sense of taste is the reason some people become connoisseurs of fine foods and wines. Those who train themselves in this way develop the ability to distinguish even the slightest differences among thousands of tastes – and to appreciate and enjoy them to a heightened extent.
Our sense of gratitude and appreciation is certainly no different. God gives us the capacity for thankfulness, but we must develop it. We certainly don't derive real joy from the things we receive if we are oblivious to receiving them.
On the other hand, those who learn to develop gratitude in their lives enjoy and profit from the gifts they receive immeasurably more than those who do not. And although some people may seem to be naturally more appreciative than others (perhaps we could call them "super-appreciators"), the truth is that we can all develop our capacity for appreciation in life. And that is something, as we saw in the last chapter, that we are commanded to do in dozens of biblical verses.
The apostle Paul's words: "Giving thanks always and for everything …" (Ephesians 5:20 ESV) don't just describe the lives of a few people born as "super-appreciators" – they represent a goal that we can all work toward.
We may not become connoisseurs of fine wines or foods, but the God who gives us all things to enjoy (James 1:17) invites, encourages, and even commands us – for the sake of our own heightened enjoyment and his praise – to become connoisseurs of his gifts.
Calculating Our Blessings How do we develop our sense of gratitude to better honor the instruction to be appreciative for the good things in our lives? We must begin, of course, by learning to recognize the blessings we have been given. Often, people may speak of "counting our blessings" when considering the good things that we have been given. But "calculating our blessings" with the help of an adding machine or calculator may be more appropriate when we really begin to see them!
This is especially true because it is very human for us to look around at what we have in the here and now. Yet when we look back and consider the blessings we have enjoyed over time, for so many of us the numbers begin to require calculating help.
Our perspective also begins to change when we realize that many things we may take for granted are only occasionally enjoyed by a large percentage of the world's population. For example, think of the statistic that if we can afford to eat three meals a day for three weeks in a row, we are among the top 15% of the richest people in the world. But if we consider our three meals a day, multiplying that number by the number of days in our lives might help us better realize the number of blessings we enjoy – in that one area alone.
The same truth applies in so many areas, of course. The doctor's and dentist's visits we may grumble about having to fit into our schedules seem different when we remember the very occasional access so many have to medical or dental care – if they have it at all. If we have a steady job, the number of days for which we get paid adds up quickly compared to those who are without a job or who are unable to work – time for the calculator again. And what about the gift of life itself?
Do we see each day we are given as a true gift or do many of those mega-micro-gifts pass by unnoticed? And, of course, in many ways we are blessed in what we do not see in our lives. As the old saying goes: "Thankfulness also includes being grateful for all the
problems we do not have." Even though we all have problems, there are many others we don't have that we can add to our list.
We could go on, of course, but the point is obvious enough. We don't really need to get out a calculator to try to add up the huge numbers of good things we have received, but then again, if we tried to add up all our blessings, we would need one. As King David wrote in thanking God for his gifts: "Surely you have granted ... unending blessings…" (Psalm 21:6).
Developing Appreciation After learning to recognize our blessings, the second part of developing gratitude is coming to appreciate them more fully. One of the primary ways to do this is to learn to focus better on the things we perhaps don't usually think about and may often take for granted.
Here again the analogy of our taste buds applies. Just as a connoisseur learns to focus on the specific characteristics of individual foods and wines, when we make a habit of focusing on the gifts we receive, we learn to better appreciate them, to give thanks for them, and to credit them to God as we should. We can easily improve our focus on this. Consider just a few of the ways we can come to see the gifts we are given more clearly: Make time for them. Taking even a couple of minutes a day to think about our blessings can have a tremendous effect on developing our appreciation for them. But, like any other activity we may try to schedule, it is important to set a specific time each day if we can. That's often the only way to make the practice a habit. The psalmist tells us "At midnight I rise to give you thanks …" (Psalm 119:62) and while midnight might not be the best time for us, any time is good if we can set it aside!
Write them down. Keeping a gratitude list when we go over the things for which we can be thankful certainly helps us to grow in
this regard. It may be impossible to write down every gift we receive, but complete recording is not the point. The simple act of writing down and thinking about many of the gifts we receive helps us to become more aware of them and to appreciate them more.
Look at them closely. The more we think about a gift, the more we usually come to appreciate it. Sometimes we see added dimensions to the blessing that we would not have otherwise noticed. And it can often really heighten our appreciation for the people and things around us to spend even a small amount of time thinking about what life would be like without those blessings. That may be an obvious example, but the more we are aware of small gifts, the more we see the large ones in true perspective.
Tell someone about them. This is easy enough if we have spouses, family members or close friends with whom we can talk openly. Naturally, the people with whom we talk don't need to know about every small detail of all that we appreciate in life; but telling others about serious blessings is the opposite side of confession of our faults – it tells others how good God is – as well as helping them better realize the gifts they have. Ephesians 5:4 shows thanksgiving is a good topic of conversation!
Share them with someone. This means literally "sharing" what we have received where this is appropriate. We may not be able to share some of the most basic gifts in life, but then again, sometimes we can. We can share many aspects of our physical blessings by giving part of what we earn to good causes, loaning items to people who need them, giving of our time, and by sharing in many other ways. If you read through your "gratitude list" every so often, you may find a number of things that are appropriate to share. Whatever it may be, when we share a gift, we focus on it and often appreciate it more ourselves.
Give thanks for them. That thanksgiving should be a major part of our prayers is seen in what the apostle Paul wrote: "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful (Colossians 4:2, emphasis added). Ironically, but most importantly, we learn to better see and appreciate our gifts by giving thanks for them. The act of giving thanks itself forces us to focus on the things for which we can be thankful, but we will have more to say on that later. Utilizing some or all of these simple techniques can help us develop our sense of gratitude to the point where we come to see gifts and blessings around us continually. But there is more to fully developed gratitude than simply coming to see our blessings and appreciating them. We will look at that truth next.