0800724399 (CNTY) by Kristen Strong

Author:Kristen Strong [Strong, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012070, REL012120, Christian women—Religious life, Change (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity, Change—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441248510
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-08-11T07:00:00+00:00

Gratitude Is God-timistic

My daughter, Faith, never shies from hard questions, and one comes up while she is splayed out on my bed with me. Her brother Ethan sits perched on the end. After talking about the same verse Betsie directed Corrie to in 1 Thessalonians, the one that instructs us to be thankful in all circumstances, Faith looks up at me. With a deep furrow over her smoky blue eyes, she says, “But Mama, I don’t know how to be thankful in all circumstances. Does that mean I’m supposed to be thankful I broke my neck?”

I look at her and brush her honey-colored hair away from her face. I think about my daddy who has multiple sclerosis. About the military wife attending her husband’s funeral. About all the Corrie ten Booms who suffered evil’s most horrific forms. Isn’t it asking too much to be thankful for the hard realities brought on by drastic change?

I meet her eyes before snuggling up next to her on the bed.

“Well, Faith, it does say to give thanks in all circumstances, so I think that includes circumstances of broken bones. But I know it’s hard to say, ‘God, thank you for allowing my neck to be broken.’ Perhaps instead you could say, ‘God, thank you for not letting my broken neck go to waste.’ You can be thankful that your story doesn’t end in something broken but instead in something healed. You can be thankful for what God worked through that situation and that your broken neck brought about many good things, including a new love for swimming and a deeper awareness of how close Jesus is to you. This is how you give thanks in all circumstances: you believe that God’s goodness is in all circumstances, and you show you believe by telling God thank you.”

She is quiet, deep in thought. Then she says with a little exhale, “Oh, that makes sense.”

Could it be that gratitude brings a measure of sense to the senseless?

Ethan looks up and says, “So it’s not about having an optimistic attitude when it comes to gratitude. It’s about having a God-timistic one.”

I tilt my head toward him and one corner of my mouth turns up in a smile. “Well, I never thought about it like that, but you’re right. It’s about remembering how God sheds light on everything, that darkness is as light to him, and no matter how the dark pierces, God’s goodness pierces deeper and higher.”

Later I look up the original meaning of the word optimism and see it is derived from the Latin optimum, meaning “the greatest good.”4 Isn’t God always going about working to bring the greatest good to our lives? Being God-timistic is knowing that God only allows pain if the gain is to be greater.

God uses what is broken on the outside to heal what is broken on the inside. That is the work being done in the dark, the work we cannot see. He is the Lord who heals (see Exod. 15:26). He is the Lord who restores and wants us to be whole—really, genuinely, totally whole.

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