Thank God for … Gratitude

By Bishop Brian Maas


In her latest book, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, researcher and author Brené Brown writes of the human tendency to have experiences of great joy followed in mere moments by that “when is the other shoe going to drop?” feeling of impending catastrophe. According to her research, about 90 percent of us do that, at least some of the time. We dampen our joy by anticipating a threat to it. She writes,
“Why do we insist on dress-rehearsing tragedy in moments of deep joy? Because joy is the most vulnerable emotion we feel. And that’s saying something, given that I study fear and shame.”

Joy is a phenomenal experience, too often blunted because we feel vulnerable to losing it. The good news, Brown explains, is that there is an antidote, a way to learn to experience joy more fully and to build up stores of its powerful energy. She writes, “What is the one thing that people who can fully lean into joy have in common? Gratitude. They practice gratitude.”

Taking a moment each morning to pray, “Thank you, God for …” or starting family meals with each person expressing one thing they’re grateful for, or keeping a daily gratitude journal are all ways to bring more gratitude in our lives. And in the process, to bring more joy—or at least to experience more deeply and more fully the joy that comes our way.

According to Brown, building a practice of gratitude lets us respond to the vulnerability of joy not in a stance of fear, but of strength, gratefully soaking in that joy in all its fullness.  Who but God would create beings not only with the ability to experience joy and moments filled with that experience, but make it so easy to lengthen and intensify that experience? Who but God would create beings with the capacity for joy, and for the gratitude that makes joy even better?

I know it sounds redundant at best, and outright dumb at worst, but I’ll say it anyway: Thank God for gratitude!

Now it’s one thing to say that in the month of Thanksgiving, but I’m saying it in the week of an election! Yes, the world seems like a hot mess, and it often feels like there’s plenty to be crabby about and precious little to be grateful for—but that’s a misleading feeling (one created and intensified by people out to get your money and your vote, by the way—but that’s another blog post). In fact, there’s more to be grateful for now than at almost any time in human history, for those willing to see it.

So be grateful. You’ll live better and you’ll even live longer. Most importantly, you’ll live joyfully, exactly as Jesus prayed we would: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” –John 15:11

May you always know Christ’s joy, in all of its fullness.
And may you ever thank God for gratitude, the gift that makes that possible.


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