The Light of Gratitude.

I believe it is a discipline to be grateful. . . . Thankfulness for life itself is a good starting point for those of us who more easily see what’s wrong with the world than what’s right.

A peculiar truth of our society, which promises so much, is this: The more we feel we are owed, the less able we are to be grateful for what we have. Our consumer culture cultivates dissatisfaction, always prompting us to hunger for more. Gratitude for faith, family, and friendship often pales in the clutter of possessions and promises that surround us.

But only one promise in life is sure: the salvation of God. We have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred
into the kingdom of light. For people in many parts of the world, that is sufficient to make them grateful all their days.

[One] evening when neighbors and I were gathered for Bible study, we were mourning the death of a teenager who had been stabbed to death on the street earlier that day. . . . One of the Bible study participants asked sadly, “What does it mean to follow Jesus in the most murderous neighborhood in the most murderous city in the most murderous nation in the world?” We had no answer to his challenge; his words met with silence as each of us pondered them.

Leaving the center, we walked out into cold darkness. The streetlight out front had been out for weeks. One of the mothers complained that she had spoken, without results, to city authorities about it several times on the phone. She had explained the danger for her children to come out onto a dark street.

As she was speaking, another mother pointed high into the sky and exclaimed, “Look!” There, surrounding a full moon, was a beautiful, circular rainbow, likely the product of ice crystals in the air reflecting the moon’s light. None of us had ever seen such a sight. We gasped at the unique magnificence of it. “Thank you, Jesus!” the first mother shouted. Sometimes, I thought, you need the darkness to see the light.

Joyce Hollyday, Then Shall Your Light Rise. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners magazine for fifteen years, and she co-founded Circle of Mercy, an ecumenical faith community in Asheville, North Carolina.