Gratitude

Written by Peter Frey

This may be controversial.

On November 1, Mary and I put up our Christmas Tree.

[Gasp]

And we started listening to Christmas music.

[Gasp]

When I posted a photo of us decking the halls on my instagram stories, it was met with a range of reactions.

In the eyes of some, I am a hero. In the eyes of others, I’m a heretic.

I get the pushback though. The beautifully simple holiday of Thanksgiving has been co-opted and cluttered by our culture’s commercialization of Christmas… and I’m complicit. [I know, that was a lot of c’s in one sentence… I couldn’t help myself.]

But the reality is, there’s a story behind our premature decorations. 

In 2016, Mary and I spent the majority of the month of December in a tiny hospital room as she received treatment for Cystic Fibrosis. We tried to make the most of it. We decked out her hospital room with a Christmas tree and more decorations than the North Pole. [I’m pretty sure the hospital staff are still trying to get glitter out of that hospital room.]

That wasn’t the only holiday we’ve spent in a hospital room. In 2017, we celebrated Thanksgiving in the hospital. In 2018, we celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary in the 

hospital. The list could go on… but that’s not the point.

There are a lot of things that God has taught us under the fluorescent lighting of hospital rooms.

One thing is – decorate early because we don’t know what tomorrow might bring.

Another is – be grateful in everything, even when everything looks different than we expected. My autocorrect wants me to change that sentence to “be grateful FOR everything”. That’s not what I’m trying to say. You don’t have to be grateful FOR everything in order to be grateful IN everything.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 

I love that. This is God’s will for you: gratitude.

As followers of Jesus, we are people of gratitude. Why? Because our hope is not in our circumstances. 

Today or tomorrow may look different than I expected, but when my hope is grounded in the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever, I can have gratitude. When my thankfulness flows out of the unchanging nature of my hope, the fluctuating nature of my circumstances does not dictate my gratitude or my joy.

My goal in writing this is not to convince you to decorate early for Christmas. [Although, hopefully I converted a few of you.] My hope for each of you is that this Thanksgiving week would be full of gratitude… not because your life looks exactly like you had hoped for but because your hope in Jesus is everything you need.