Edina Hall

Sisters and Brothers in Christ, 

When my husband and I were first married, we got caught up starting a gratitude journal popularized by Oprah in the late 1990s.

My early gratitude journal was rough and entries were hurried. While lost to time, I am sure I wrote things like: “The rising sun. Not having to cook dinner.  It didn’t snow. My experiments worked. We don’t pay for heat.”  They seem shallow and trite, but in those early days of the list, it was all I could see.

Then it happened!

After a few short weeks, there was a shift.

Instead of quickly finishing the list like an assignment due by evening, I found myself looking for “gratitude moments” throughout the day.

“Lunch with Joanna” was not just a thing I did, but a time with my good friend that I was deeply grateful for in my busy day. “Bible study” included not just study, but at 7:00am I was grateful for the faithfulness of small community and a priest dedicated enough to meet so early.

Slowly, my short entries became the tip of the iceberg for deeper gratitude. A gratitude expressed in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (4:10-20) from today’s readings (and many of his other letters!).  

There is much to be grateful in the world today, but things that I am ungrateful for seem to be in abundance and are easier to spot.  

Snatching. Destroying. Withholding. Killing. It is abundant, loud, and filling. God does not call us to ignore these things or to spin their existence into something palatable or ignorable by practicing gratitude for the opposite.

Gratitude is not a great panacea. As a matter of fact, it can make us too comfortable.  

I am grateful I am not cold—but do not see those that are. 

This Lent my gratitude journal will begin anew. It will be easy to see moments, items, and people that I am grateful for, and I am looking forward to the shift from listing them to seeking them out in my every day. God calls us to see the good!

But this time, I’d like to occasionally challenge myself to see past my gratitude and ask, “I wonder where God is in the other side of my gratitude?” 

—Edina