To Be Glad For The Bad

Gratitude is easy when life is good, but it is also easily forgotten.

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash

When life is good with no dangers or serious problems in sight, it’s easy to hit the spiritual cruise control.

Perhaps this occurs because we don’t understand the purpose of gratitude. It’s fair to consider it a response, and most logically applied to good circumstances. Someone gives us a gift or allows us into their lane on the freeway and we feel a warm feeling about humanity and our circumstances at the moment. Makes sense.

But what if gratitude is a tool, say a crowbar, that has the ability to change our surroundings? I chose the crowbar because it’s strong and yet manageable. It’s a lever and pretty serious looking, unlike a happy face.

Black belts in gratitude exercise their appreciation for God, life, and people when things are not going their way. They have the trained eyesight to see through difficulties to the other side, to the possibilities of how God might use these hard times to mold their character and deepen their future compassion for those who will fall into similar pits they are in at the moment.

When our human machinery is humming along and things seem as they should be in our perspective, we start forgetting some important facts about life. I’m not saying life is miserable, but I am saying it is problematic, and if we don’t understand this, we are vulnerable to despair. On the other hand, the best antidote for despair is not pretending all is well, but the ability to express gratitude especially in the middle of overwhelming difficulties.

So true gratitude takes faith and courage. It is a weapon of our warfare.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

2 Corinthians 10:4 (ESV)