Giving thanks to the Lord

Father Abraham Srambical

G.K. Chesterton was one of the remarkable individuals of the early twentieth century. Chesterton was a novelist, critic, poet and popular theologian. Toward the end of his life, he turned to the writing of his autobiography. While he was writing his autobiography, he tried to state in a single sentence the most important lesson he had learned from life. After many false starts and wrong answers, he finally reached his conclusion. The most important thing he had learned, he claimed, was that the critical factor in life is whether you take things for granted or receive them with gratitude. If we take our lives for granted, we ourselves will inevitably be taken for granted by someone else. We must have an awareness of life itself and this immeasurable gift from God which we should not take for granted. Most of us have a ledger view of life. We add up the pluses and minuses and try to account for our lives. In the process, we miss the amazing fact that we even have a life to add up. In the culture of cost-benefit analysis or failure-success calculation, it is easy to miss the most important realities of our life which are incalculable. It is quite possible that many of us take the most important things in our lives for granted - simply because they are more difficult to calculate, less easy to control. Experience can or should teach us that we cannot make love or friendship happen. We cannot buy affection. When such relationships appear in our lives, we know they are gifts and they are free. We cannot manufacture faith or hope. We may receive faith as grace, act on it and strengthen it, but we cannot make ourselves believe. Hope is conceived within us and we are not the parents of our own hope. How easily we take life for granted. We breathe, we eat, we walk, we play, we sleep and expect to awake. We take 10 fingers and 10 toes for granted. We are more surprised when someone has one leg than by the fact that most of us have two legs. We more startled when someone has one eye than by the fact that most of us have two. We take flow and supply of water for granted until and unless it becomes a threatening flood. The contemporary compulsion is to be control. How much we want to be in control of our own lives, even the lives of others. We want to decide when we begin the day, what to do and when to call it quits. We are tempted to decide when human life should begin, how it should be lived and when it can or should be ended. Let us awaken with a song of gratitude in our hearts because God has granted us many blessings in our lives. Thank you, Lord, for all that you gave me and all that you asked of me. Thank you, Lord, for all that you gave me in past years. Thank you for the sunshiny days and for the sad and cloudy ones, for the calm afternoons and the dark nights. For love and for all beautiful and sweet things, for the flowers and the stars, thank you for health and sickness, for sorrows and joys. Thank you for the time of loneliness, for the work, for the worries, for the fears, for the difficult times and the tears. Thank you, Lord, for your smiling face and friendly hand that kept me strong. I saw your loving hands and providence even in the negatives! Thank you for having kept me alive, for having given me shelter, warmth and nourishment. Thank you Lord, for having given me friends and dear ones. Thank you, Lord, for having given me wisdom and prudence. And for everything that brought me closer to you. Thank you, Lord! “Be thankful and praise the Lord as you enter His temple. For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100:3-4)