{"id":26168,"date":"2025-11-27T09:49:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T14:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26168"},"modified":"2025-11-27T09:49:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T14:49:20","slug":"practicing-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26168","title":{"rendered":"Practicing Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Gratitude - Brandon Lake - Lyric Video\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LDHCzm0mhuk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Practice of Thanksgiving<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Thursday, November 27, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thanksgiving Day (U.S.)<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gratitude is strongest, clearest, most robust, and radical when things are really hard.&nbsp;<br>\u2014Diana Butler Bass,&nbsp;<em>Grateful<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>During a time of crisis, historian and author Diana Butler Bass shares an experience of committing to a practice of gratitude:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did the only thing I could think of doing\u2014simply saying \u201cthanks\u201d as I went through the day. I woke up with a brief prayer: \u201cThank you that I am alive.\u201d I got coffee and breakfast: \u201cThank you for this food, this day.\u201d I looked out the window: \u201cThank you for sunshine.\u201d I went into my office: \u201cThank you for words, for work.\u201d\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Even when it comes to thankfulness, sometimes you have to take what you can get<\/strong>. I took nothing for granted\u2026. Over the weeks, with my hapless prayers, I discovered something quite unexpected: <strong>gratitude, like interest, compounds. T<\/strong>his simple form of giving thanks made me pay attention and start looking for particular reasons to be grateful. There would always be grounds for ingratitude. Always. <strong>Seeking out the small things for which I could give thanks, however, changed my field of spiritual and emotional vision<\/strong>. <strong>I learned not to focus on what was lacking\u2026<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gratitude is not a form of passive acceptance or complicity. Rather, <strong>it is the capacity to stare doubt, loss, <\/strong>chaos, and despair right in the eye and say, \u201cI am still here.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Butler Bass describes how a practice of gratitude empowers and enlivens us:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gratitude is defiance of sorts, the defiance of kindness in the face of anger, of connection in the face of division, and of hope in the face of fear.<\/strong> Gratefulness does not acquiesce to evil\u2014it resists evil \u2026 by tunneling under its foundations of anger, resentment, and greed. Thus, gratitude strengthens our character and moral resolve, giving each of us the possibility of living peaceably and justly. It untwists knotted hearts, waking us to a new sense of who we are as individuals and in community. Being thankful is the very essence of what it means to be alive, and to know that life abundantly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gratitude is not a psychological or political panacea, like a secular prosperity gospel, one that denies pain or overlooks injustice, because being grateful does not \u201cfix\u201d anything. P<\/strong>ain, suffering, and injustice\u2014these things are all real. They do not go away. <strong>Gratitude, however, invalidates the false narrative that<\/strong> <strong>these things are the sum total of human existence, that despair is the last word. Gratitude gives us a new story.<\/strong> It opens our eyes to see that every life is, in unique and dignified ways, graced: the lives of the poor, the castoffs, the sick, the jailed, the exiles, the abused, the forgotten as well as those in more comfortable physical circumstances. Your life. My life. We all share in the ultimate gift\u2014life itself. Together. Right now\u2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gratitude calls us to sit together, to imagine the world as a table of hospitality. To feed one another. To feast, to dance in the streets. To know and celebrate abundance.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>_________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> Diana Butler Bass&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Give thanks in all circumstances\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblestudytools.com\/1-thessalonians\/5-18.html\">1 Thessalonians 5:18<\/a>\u00a0NIV).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Friend to Friend<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianity.com\/wiki\/holidays\/meaning-of-thanksgiving.html\">Thanksgiving<\/a> is here and so I\u2019ve been thinking about gratitude a lot lately. What is it? When should we show it? What does God say about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul wrote the Thessalonians, \u201cGive thanks in all circumstances\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblestudytools.com\/1-thessalonians\/5-18.html\">1 Thessalonians 5:18<\/a>). Most read that verse and think it rather nice. So we slap a sloppy coat of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianity.com\/wiki\/holidays\/meaning-of-thanksgiving.html\">thanksgiving<\/a> on life and go about our day. In reality, most of us are thankful for very little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Notice the Bible doesn\u2019t command us to\u00a0<em>feel<\/em> thankful in all circumstances. Instead it commands us to \u201cgive thanks in all circumstances.<\/strong>\u201d When I begin to praise God in a difficult situation, even if I don\u2019t feel like it, many times the scales fall from my eyes and I begin to see glimpses of His glory sprinkled on the black backdrop of the situation like diamonds on black velvet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes I don\u2019t see glory in tragedy, but I still can praise God because I know He is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gratitude changes the lens through which we see the circumstances in our little slice of time. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianity.com\/wiki\/holidays\/meaning-of-thanksgiving.html\">Thanksgiving<\/a> changes our perspective despite broken dreams, broken relationships, tumultuous circumstances, and unfulfilled longings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As you praise God for who He is and thank Him for what He\u2019s done, your perspective of Him grows larger and your problems grow smaller.&nbsp;<\/strong>As a result, you will experience a deeper sense of intimacy with God as the emotional gap between what you know to be true and how you feel at the moment closes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Practice of Thanksgiving Thursday, November 27, 2025 Thanksgiving Day (U.S.)&nbsp; Gratitude is strongest, clearest, most robust, and radical when things are really hard.&nbsp;\u2014Diana Butler Bass,&nbsp;Grateful During a time of crisis, historian and author Diana Butler Bass shares an experience of committing to a practice of gratitude:&nbsp;&nbsp; I did the only thing I could think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26168"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26169,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26168\/revisions\/26169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}