Chapter Four: Gratitude
Chapter 4
Gratitude
First, we talked about truth, the terrible truth which is the facts of life, the twisted and fallen world that we live in. And then the wonderful facts that deal with another world, another level, another perspective. Both are true. We need to keep them in perspective.
Abraham looked at the facts of his life, his own age and his wife’s barrenness, and it says he staggered not at the promise of God. He looked clearly at the facts. And Christians ought to be people who are prepared to look most steadily at the facts, the awful facts. And then look at the other level on which those facts may be interpreted and stagger not at the promise of God. So that was chapter one.
And the second chapter was on the message. God will go to any lengths to get our attention long enough to say, I am the Lord. I love you. My will for you is joy. And so if we can remember those two aspects—the truth, the message—then it will be easier for us to say yes, Lord. Acceptance.
Paul accepted the thorn even though it wasn’t to his taste and preferences. Jesus accepted the cup and said not My will but Thine be done. And that same vision and that same principle ought to characterize each of us Christians as we receive, from the hand of God, the cup of salvation with whatever it contains for our ultimate redemption and perfection. There will be nothing in that cup of salvation except what is necessary.
So, having said all of that, can we then thank God? Gratitude is the subject at hand for us now. And I’d like to give you three things to think about under this subject. First of all, I’d like for us to think about two things that ought to distinguish Christians from the rest of the world. And to be quite honest, as I travel around and meet all kinds and varieties of Christians, I’m dismayed to notice that very often there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the way they live and the way the rest of the world lives, in the way they respond to the experiences of their lives and the way the world would respond. In other words, if they were arrested for being Christians, would there be sufficient evidence to convict them? And I’m always asking myself the question, what kind of a difference would I expect others to see in my life which would at least catch their attention and make them say there is something different about that woman?
I said in my book, Let Me Be a Woman, that I’m not a different kind of a Christian because I’m a woman. But I most certainly ought to be a very different kind of a woman because I’m a Christian. Do you know people to whom you can point and say, look at him? There is a Christian. Watch that woman’s life. She is a Christian. What kind of evidence would your friends see in your life?
Two things that certainly ought to distinguish you and me and everyone who calls himself a Christian are acceptance and gratitude. And it’s very difficult to draw a sharp distinction between them. If we can accept a gift, then we can say thank you. Now we all have the experience of receiving all kinds of gifts from friends and relatives and great-aunts and people for which we have to say thank you, but we really aren’t exactly tickled with their choice. I mean, how many crocheted toilet paper covers can a woman use? If that’s Aunt Susie’s thing, then you receive it every Christmas and every birthday, perhaps, from her. And the only thing that really is required of the recipient is to say thank you.
But when we’re talking about the gifts of God, we’re talking about gifts that come from One who knows exactly what we need even though it is not necessarily to our tastes and preferences. And He gives us everything that is appropriate to the job that He wants us to do. And so, understanding that, then we can say yes, Lord. I’ll take it. It would not have been my choice but knowing You love me, I will receive it and I understand that someday I’m going to understand the necessity for this thing. So I accept it. And then I can even go the step beyond and say thank You. Thank You, Lord.
Paul says that in everything we ought to give thanks. It’s not the experiences of our lives that change us. It is our response to those experiences.16 And that should be a very noticeable distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian.
I mentioned in an earlier chapter the responses of various people that I saw in Logan Airport one day when the airport was closed. There was a great variety of responses there from tears to anger to resignation and peace. We all know people who have gone through terrible things and have turned out to be pure gold. I think every one of us knows somebody like that who has been through awful things and yet that hot fire has refined that steel or that gold. We also know people who have been through equally bad things, maybe not quite as bad, but they have turned out to be angry, bitter, resentful, querulous, and generally un-get-along-with able.
Now what was the difference? It wasn’t the experiences. It was their response. And the response of a Christian should be gratitude. Thank You, Lord. I’ll take this. I think we could divide the world into two classes: the people who make a habit of complaining about what they haven’t got or what they have got and those who make a habit of saying “Thank You, Lord” for what they haven’t got and what they have got. And you remember my basic definition of suffering: having what you don’t want and wanting what you don’t have, which covers the whole gamut from the smallest things like a toothache or taxes to a tumor.
It was very unsettling for me when I lived with that jungle tribe called Aucas, the so-called stone-age savages that killed my husband. I had the opportunity a couple of years after their deaths to live with those people and to get to know the people who actually did the killing. And I lived in a house with no walls. Everybody lived in a house with no walls. So this gave me an opportunity to observe very closely virtually everything that went on day and night.
And I was also under the most relentless and keen scrutiny from them because I was a freak in their midst, and everything I did was not only freakish but highly hilarious and also worth imitating. So I got a lot of that. I really had never thought of myself as a comedian until I lived with the Auca Indians and I discovered that I was expected to be non-stop entertainment.
But one of the things that stood out to me in my observations of their family life was that they never complained about anything. And my daughter, of course, grew up there in the jungle with Indians. And she was three years old when we went to live with the Aucas. She had lived with other Indians before that, and we went back later and lived with other Indians again.
But her husband made a statement to me which I’m sure my husband, maybe I should say I’m sure none of my husbands, could possibly make about me. Walt said to me about Valerie one day, he said, “You know, that woman never complains about anything.” And of course, my mother’s heart just swelled with pride and I suddenly realized that I probably had nothing whatsoever to do with that. In fact, it was in spite of me rather than because of me that my son-in-law could say that, because number one, Valerie is more an Elliot than she is a Howard and the Elliots were much more cheerful people. I come from a long line of pessimists on both sides. Champion pessimists.
But I realized that probably the major reason why is that she had grown up with Indians who never complained. We lived in a place where there was terrible weather. We had 144 inches of rain per year, which is twelve feet. And so when we traveled, which was always by foot and trail and sometimes canoe, we generally got soaked. We got mud sometimes splashed from head to foot, but at least up to your knees. And we were at the mercy of gnats and mud and mildew and mosquitoes and various other discomforts.
And the Indians would come from maybe a four-hour walk over the trail with say a fifty-pound basket of food on their backs—the women anyway (the men couldn’t carry fifty pounds but the women could). And I never once saw a woman take that tumpline off her forehead and set her basket down and say, whew. Never. They just didn’t do that.
Now these people were not Christians. And to my shame I say that I saw among them a cheerfulness, a gracious and peaceful and serene acceptance of what we would consider very hostile conditions which was taken for granted. No one was patting himself on the back because he didn’t complain. So, let’s take a lesson or two from those simple people and make a habit instead of complaining of saying thank You, Lord.
My daughter is dealing with probably one of the most difficult questions that parents have to deal with in training their children, and that’s whining. Her children are obedient. They’ve learned that. They know that daddy and momma mean exactly what they say. But they don’t necessarily do it cheerfully. They don’t do it necessarily with a smile. And sometimes one of them has to get sent back to his bedroom until he finds a nice face. Val or Walt will say, now we really don’t like that face. We don’t like that tone of voice. You go back into the bedroom. And when you find a nice face or a cheerful voice, then you can come back.
And Amy Carmichael, missionary to India who’s biography I wrote called A Chance to Die, told how when she was growing up in a little village in Northern Ireland, they not only immediately stretch forth their hand for the spanking which was given by a small paddle called a pandy, but they had to say thank you, mother. That’s tough discipline, isn’t it?
I had a very charming young lady staying with me once who told me this wonderful story about the kind of difference that Jesus Christ made in her own life when she was probably about eighteen years old. And this is the sort of story that I’m always looking for. And it thrills my soul to see that there is a practical, down-to-earth, visible difference that Jesus Christ has made in somebody’s life.
And she said she had been going to, I think it was a Young Life meeting where the speaker talked about honoring your father and your mother. And she said most of the time it was going in one ear and out the other. And all of a sudden something clicked, and she said, ”Oh, I’m supposed to honor my father and my mother. And my mother and I are like two cats a lot of times.”
And she said, “I went home and I began to think about it and I thought oh, I can’t do that. This thing about being a Christian is too much.” But she said, “I began to pray that God would help me to do that, whatever it meant. I really didn’t know what it meant. But I knew that complaining and being grumpy and hard to get along with was certainly not fitting to someone who honors father and mother.”
She went on to say, “Later, I wanted to go to a certain event and I asked my mother if I could go.” She was still living at home, and so although she was seventeen or eighteen, she knew that she was under their authority. Well, her mother said she could not go to the event. And she said, “I said, okay.” And then she said, “I couldn’t believe my own ears. I couldn’t believe it. I went into my room and I sat down and I said, whoa. It’s the first time in my whole life that I haven’t argued with my mother.” Now that was step one in that girl’s obedience to Jesus Christ.
And it’s all very well to make wonderful professions about being a Christian, to do your praying and your reading and your hymn singing and go to church and do this and that and the other thing. But when it comes right down to where the rubber hits the road, what kind of a difference does it make? And that girl was able to say, “Thank You, Lord. My mother said no. It was my opportunity to obey Jesus Christ.” So that’s our first point for this chapter, gratitude and acceptance should distinguish the Christian.
The second thing to consider about gratitude is that it honors God. And I got this idea straight out of the Bible from the Revised Standard Version of Psalm 50, verse 23. This is what it says, “He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me; to him who orders his way aright I will show the salvation of God!” He honors me and prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.
It’s all very well to make wonderful professions about being a Christian, to do your praying and your reading and your hymn singing and go to church and do this and that and the other thing. But when it comes right down to where the rubber hits the road, what kind of a difference does it make?
Let me go back to October 25, 1972. That was a rather eventful day in my life. I found an apartment for my mother who was moving from Florida up to Massachusetts to be near three of her six children. So that was a major thing that happened that day. Then the son of a very close friend of mine was killed in an automobile accident. I had a visit from a young woman who had a three-year-old son with a serious heart anomaly. And we had sat down in my living room and talked about the lessons that God was teaching her through this, one of which was acceptance and gratitude. The condition was such that the doctors had told her you never know when you may find him dead in his bed or in his playpen. And there’s nothing we can do until he reaches the age of four, but he may not make it to four.
And then that very same day, my husband had to go to the hospital for a lump on his lip. And that morning I had written down on just a little piece of scratch paper these words: “How to deal with suffering of any kind.” I didn’t know all of the things that were going to happen in that particular day. And I don’t know where this came from except I suppose from God. How to deal with suffering of any kind. Number one, I wrote, “Recognize it.” Number two, “Accept it.” Number three, “Offer it to God as a sacrifice.” And number four, “Offer yourself with it.”
Now whether I had a premonition that this thing was going to be serious or whether I was just reviewing lessons from other years, I really don’t remember. But that same afternoon we were told by the doctor that my husband had cancer. The next night there was bleeding from another source which had nothing to do with that lump. We were filled with fear and resentment and worry, and it was all terribly real for both of us and necessitated our coming to Christ for a refuge.
You can imagine the dialogues that I began having with God at that point. “Lord, haven’t we been through this once before? You took husband number one. Now surely, Lord, You wouldn’t take Ad, would You?” And it was as if the Lord said, “I might. Trust Mme.” So I had to begin all over again, I thought, learning lessons that I really thought I had learned well enough before. I was saying, “Lord, did I flunk the test? Do we have to go over this again?” And the answer was, “Yes, you have to go over it again.”
Now where do you turn? What do you do? You cry. You pray. You ask why? But then there’s a much better thing to do that is stated in this verse that I read you. “He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me; to him who orders his way aright I will show the salvation of God!” (Ps. 50:23 rsv). Now there are a good many circuitous routes to learning to know God. But there are some shortcuts. And I’m here to suggest that gratitude is one of those shortcuts. Just start thanking God in advance because no matter what is about to happen, you already know that God is in charge. You are not adrift in a sea of chaos.
Just start thanking God in advance because no matter what is about to happen, you already know that God is in charge. You are not adrift in a sea of chaos.
So, what is there to be grateful for in the midst of suffering? Well, God is still love. Nothing has changed that. God is still God. He’s sovereign. He’s got the whole world in His hands. He knew that my husband was going to get cancer on that particular day, or that we would find out about it on that particular day. Before the foundation of the world, He knew that. So He wasn’t taken by surprise. Love still wills my joy. Now I can always thank God for all of those things. Those are the facts along with these other horrible things with which we can hardly cope. It prepares the way so that I may show Him the salvation of God.
So when we went to the doctor again about the second problem, we discovered he had a second kind of cancer. The two things were totally unrelated. And as we walked across the parking lot my husband began to quote from Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”17 And I could see that he had taken already a view of total despair. His first wife had died of cancer. His father had died from the kind of cancer which he had just discovered he had.
Love still wills my joy.
I went back praying that God would keep me from tears, particularly since I was going to my brother’s house for supper that night, and I thought, I can’t be sitting there dissolved in tears. I prayed that he would take my anxieties and my fears. And that He would deliver me from making a career out of my troubles, which is a lesson that that young woman who had the little boy with the serious heart anomaly had pointed out to me just a week before. She said, “I realized that I could make a career out my child’s illness. I began to pray that God would free me from that in order that I might serve others.” That lesson had sunk deeply into my heart. How little I realized how desperately I was going to need that.
And so I thought of a little Chinese song, not that I speak Chinese but I heard that this song was sung by Chinese refugees in World War II. “I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. I will look upward and travel onward and not be afraid.”18 Then God reminded me of Psalm 56:3 where He said, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in You” (kjv). And Psalm 34:1 that says, “I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (kjv).
Now that’s a willed, conscious, deliberate obedience, isn’t it? I will bless the Lord regardless of what’s happening around here because there is that other level, that other perspective, a different vision. The visible things are transitory. It is the invisible things that are really permanent. The doctor’s verdict was fact. I had to believe it. But God’s Word was also fact.
I was able to write in my journal these words, which I certainly would have forgotten if they weren’t there in black and white: “Good and peaceful all day.” That was my feelings. Good and peaceful. Does that make any sense from any other standpoint except the perspective of eternity? It can’t possibly make sense to anybody else. That’s why it isn’t explanations that we need. It’s a person. We need Jesus Christ, our refuge, our fortress, the stronghold of my life. It takes desolation to teach us our need of Him.
We need Jesus Christ, our refuge, our fortress, the stronghold of my life. It takes desolation to teach us our need of Him.
Think of the miracles in the New Testament that Jesus performed. If you were to go through the whole New Testament and make a list of the situations that people were in when Jesus arrived, some of them were relatively trivial. For example, the embarrassed host at the wedding of Cana where the wine had run out. Now people don’t really, desperately need wine all the time. I guess back then it was pretty much one of the staple foods. But you don’t really need seconds at a party, do you? And yet, when the wine ran out, the first miracle Jesus performed was to provide not only seconds for the party but better wine than the host had been able to serve on the first round.
If the wine hadn’t run out, the people would not have been prepared to recognize Jesus in the way that they did. When there was 5,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 people who were in need of food on the mountain when Jesus had been preaching to them, the disciples said they needed food for them, but they probably could have made it home. I don’t think they would have starved to death between the mountain and their own houses. It was a relatively small thing. But it was a miracle and it was in that situation.
So, what is your place of need today? Has the wine run out? Are you hungry? Is it something more desperate like the man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years or the child who had died or the widow who had lost her only son or the baby born blind or the storm that came up when the disciples thought they were perishing? What is your place of need? Where is Jesus putting His finger in your life today? Maybe there is an unanswered prayer that you have been battering away at God’s door for years about, and it just seems as though He’s not paying attention. Maybe there’s some deep resentment in your heart because somebody has hurt you, somebody has done something which humanly speaking is unforgiveable.
Forgiveness is for real offenses. It’s not like saying, “excuse me” when you step on somebody’s toe by accident. “Excuse me” is one thing. But “forgive me” is for real offenses. And Jesus comes into our lives in these places of need. And if we recognize Him because of our need, then we can receive whatever it is that He is prepared to offer us whether it’s the grace of forgiveness or the patience to wait for the answer to that prayer or healing or serenity in the midst of the worst times of your life. Whatever it is, you can receive it and say, “Thank You, Lord.”
I have never thanked God for cancer. I have never thanked God specifically that certain Indians murdered my husband. I don’t think I need to thank God for the cancer or for the murder. But I do need to thank God that in the midst of that very situation the world was still in His hands. The One who keeps all those galaxies wheeling in space is the very hand that holds me. The hands that were wounded on the cross are the same hands that hold the seven stars. The hands that were laid on old John when he was there on the Island of Patmos, and the voice that was like the sound of many waters said to him, don’t be afraid. I AM. I have the keys.
At the beginning of this chapter, I referenced that I was going to tell you three things relevant to gratitude in the midst of suffering, and I don’t think I’ve specified what that third thing is, but I’ve already said it. The first thing was that gratitude and acceptance distinguish the Christian. The second was that gratitude honors God. And the third principle relevant to gratitude in the face of suffering comes from the second half of the same verse I referenced earlier, Psalm 50, verse 23. “He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me; to him who orders his way aright I will show the salvation of God!” (rsv). It prepares the way. It is in these very situations which are so painful—having what you don’t want, wanting with all your heart something that you don’t have—that thanksgiving can prepare the way for God to show us His Salvation.
Ten weeks after that doctor’s office visit I wrote in my journal, “One down, twenty-nine to go. Ad had his first betatron treatment yesterday. Three and a half minutes under the eye of a machine the size of a freight car making the noise of three motor boats. Danger, high voltage signs in the hallway, nuclear medicine on the door, alarm system. This morning snow on the ground. The bare dogwood trees against a blue sky. The little raggedy form of McDuff [he was my Scottish terrier] running in the snow. All these things in the action of the betatron and we, ourselves, held in the hand that held the seven stars. The hand that is now laid on us again with love. And His loving words, fear not. Don’t be afraid. I am the one who died. I am alive and I have the keys.”
Remember Elisha and his servant sitting there on the mountain and suddenly the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. They hadn’t been able to see them except with the eye of faith. Similarly, you and I have no idea of the things that are going on in the unseen world, except we do have an idea that they are for our perfection, for our fulfillment, for our ultimate blessing.
I close this chapter with one more verse from the Psalms, specifically, Psalm 55:22, “Cast your burden on the Lord and He shall sustain you” (nkjv). To my amazement and delight I discovered that that word burden in the Hebrew is the same word as the word for gift. This is a transforming truth to me. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin dimly and faintly to see it as a gift. I can realize that it is through that very thing which is so far from being the thing I would have chosen, that God wants to teach me His way of salvation. I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will say yes, Lord. I will say thank You, Lord.
It is in these very situations which are so painful—having what you don’t want, wanting with all your heart something that you don’t have—that thanksgiving can prepare the way for God to show us His Salvation.