Thanking God for Little Things

A Christian Thanksgiving is God’s people rejoicing in their Father’s kindness . . . knowing they didn’t deserve it.

As I told you last month, I recently bought an Accord hybrid. Generally, I can get 200,000 miles out of my cars, but my old Accord required some expensive repair work. I decided that, at my age, I needed a dependable car, even if the old one had only 100,000 miles on it. Old people are already ticked at being old. Car repairs will turn an old guy into a serial killer.

I like my new car. 

However, there was one problem. The car’s screen and my phone didn’t connect via Bluetooth. To make calls, I had to pull off the road, turn off the motor, and, sitting in the Florida heat, make or receive calls. If I left the car running, the demon (or whatever it was) would block incoming and outgoing calls. I took the car to my regular Honda repair place, and they couldn’t fix the problem, having no idea what caused it. I finally took it to the dealership, where I bought the car. The service manager said that nobody else was having that problem. (That’s a kind way of saying, “You’re crazy, and you did something really stupid.”) When I was getting ready to go ballistic, a mechanic in the service area said, “Hey, let me see what I can do.” He opened the door, sat in the passenger seat, and, using the icon on the screen, deleted all the software installed on my car and reinstalled it. After days of frustration, it took about five minutes, and my phone was finally working. 

Brown, where are you going with this?

Since you’re reading this in November, I felt I ought to say something about Thanksgiving. So, I’m thinking of God’s kindness in my life. Of course, I’m thankful for my family and friends, God’s provision, my salvation, etc., but I’m most thankful for my working phone. I know, I know. That’s not very spiritual, but it is what it is. When that mechanic fixed my phone, I felt like speaking in tongues and hugging him . . . but neither was appropriate. However, I was extremely thankful.

I know that my fixed phone is a little thing in the grand scheme of things. However, I have observed in myself and others that when we aren’t thankful for little things, we’re often not thankful for big ones. One of my closest Christian friends can be described as a grateful man, giving God thanks “in all things.” He is certainly thankful for God’s kindness and goodness in his life, but you should see his thankfulness for a chocolate ice cream cone! I’ve often asked Jesus to make me that way—thankful for ice cream, a child’s laughter, the sun breaking through after a thunderstorm, and the greeting from my wife and German shepherd when I get home. (My late friend, John DeBrine, was a lifelong bachelor. Whenever someone asked why he wasn’t married, he would respond, “When I get home, my shepherd always greets me by jumping for joy and wagging her tail. Does your wife do that?”)

Everything is a little thing to a sovereign God . . . but not to me. I often ignore or miss so many little good things happening to me all the time. I’ve asked God to make me sensitive and thankful in this area. It’s surprising what happens to my cold heart when something like a phone is fixed, and I’m thankful. When Paul said that we were to be thankful in and for everything (Ephesians 5:20), he knew that when we’re thankful for even little things, the big ones fall into place. Paul was teaching something similar to what I just discovered. If you’re aware of and thankful for little things (my friend calls them “flashes of grace”), it puts legs on being thankful for all things. And that constitutes a grateful heart.

But there’s more. There is an interesting incident in Luke 17 when Jesus healed ten lepers who asked him to have mercy on them. Jesus told them to show themselves to the religious authorities and healed them all of their leprosy on the way. Only one, a Samaritan (an outcast because of his leprosy and Samaritan origin), returned to Jesus to thank him. Jesus said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? . . . Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:17-19).

Why weren’t nine of the healed lepers thankful for what God did? First, they thought their leprosy was unfair and undeserved. Second, they were sure they deserved the healing Jesus gave them. Not only that, it is sobering to realize, from what Jesus said about the Samaritan, that the other nine were “people of the covenant.” They were the religious ones.   

Now, let me give you a Thanksgiving truth. Not only does a lack of thankfulness for little things extinguish a grateful heart, but self-righteousness does, too. Self-righteousness and thankfulness hardly ever dance together. In fact, the key to thankfulness is repentance. Repentance, in essence, isn’t change. It’s the recognition of who we are and who God is, with the understanding that if we got what we deserved, we would have nothing.

I’ve noticed in myself and others that our religious convictions often become so important that we sound and are self-righteous. It’s a dangerous thing to be right. It’s dangerous because, but for God’s grace, we’re quite capable of being wrong. It’s dangerous because we forget that being right is a gift, not something we earned. It’s dangerous because, being right about some important things, we’re silly enough to think that we’re right about everything. It’s dangerous because we forget that unbelievers are to know our love as much as or more than our views. It’s also dangerous because it can ruin Thanksgiving.

It’s an old story you’ve probably heard before. A grandmother watched her grandson playing in the beach surf when, to her horror, a wave picked up the boy and drew him under. She shouted, “Oh God, do something to save my grandson!” At that moment, a wave deposited her grandson on the shore. She looked to the heavens and said, “But God, he had a hat.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to be thankful when I focus on the hat. Those healed and unthankful lepers were probably self-righteous, which probably caused them to look for the hat, too. It’s easy to nod in the direction of God’s kindness and, at the same time, think we deserve more. 

Do you know what I find irritating? It’s when I let someone get in front of me in traffic, and they don’t acknowledge my good deed with even a nod. I always think, What a twit! And their parents didn’t teach them how to say thanks. There are times when I want to bump the backside of their car except . . . well, my car is new and all, and I don’t want to put a scratch on it. But after I get my first scratch, I’ll be dangerous.

Seriously, the person who didn’t thank me wasn’t thankful, but I was self-righteous on steroids, and that’s worse. I’m not saying that from now on I’ll be kind and forgiving when I’m not acknowledged for my kindness, but at least I’ll recognize my self-righteousness and repent of it. And it will probably be rare for me to let anyone into traffic again. That, too, will be self-righteous, and I’ll have to repent of that as well.

You have probably never heard anyone say repentance is the key to thankfulness. It’s a fairly new thought for me, too. There is a direct and inverse correlation between self-righteousness and thankfulness. The more you think you’re wonderful, the less you’ll be thankful.

There are so many profound truths in the prodigal son story Jesus told in Luke 15. Two sons are at the heart of the story, one good and the other bad. The good son sulked and arrogantly paraded his faithfulness . . . and walked away alone in his anger. The bad son knew his failure, confessed it, and got a celebratory party of joy and thankfulness.

A Christian Thanksgiving is God’s people rejoicing in their Father’s kindness . . . knowing they didn’t deserve it.

He asked me to remind you.