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Gratitude
“What shall I return to the Lord
for all his goodness to me?”
Psalm 116:12, NIV
There are several answers to this question. The quickest answer, of course, is “nothing.” There is nothing that you can do that will make God any grander than He already is. There is nothing that you can do that will add to His glory – that would be like adding to the infinite.
In “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis writes:
“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what that is really like.
It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.”[1]
While there is nothing we can add to God, there is, in another sense, a correct way to “repay” the Lord for His goodness to us. That is living a life of gratitude. Gratitude has nothing to do with the amount one has been given – I’m sure you’ve met wealthy persons who were miserable wretches and needy persons who were full of joy. Gratitude means living in the knowledge that everything we have is a gift. Our Father in heaven is not stingy! He has given us “life and health and peace” through Jesus Christ.[2]
The other thing that living a life of gratitude means, according to the writer of Psalm 116, is that we seek to follow God’s commands – not out of an attempt to earn His favor but because we have been loved.
“I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
I will fulfill my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.”
Psalm 116:13-14, NIV
Live free today in the knowledge that your Father in heaven loves you and cares for you. Live a life of gratitude toward Him.
[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 192. If this seems familiar, this quotation is the origin of the name of the band “Sixpence None the Richer.”
[2] To paraphrase Charles Wesley in “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”
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