An Apologetic of Thankfulness

Doug Wilson:

Paul attributes darkness of understanding to a hardness of heart. This is why we should aim for the heart. And the thing we should be shooting at an ungrateful heart is several clips of gratitude bullets.

We all know enough to thank God for our food, but we often get stuck there. I suggest branching out a bit, especially around the unbelievers we are seeking to win. This means figuring out how to express thankfulness for really good sneezes, a Styrofoam cup of truck stop coffee, the way it feels when you pull your socks all the way up, the tricks your smartphone does, the way the clouds can do that, not to mention the way those birds are fooling around in the tree, your wife’s neck, the happy task of mowing the lawn, and steaks on the grill. And by all these things, I am not talking about “happy about,” but rather “thankful to.”

Dante Rossetti once summed it up nicely: 'The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.'

An apologetic of gratitude is one which helps create those moments, and which presses the point when it happens. And a good way to press the point is by chuckling and saying to your friend, “You know what’s cool? A narwhal’s horn, that’s what.”

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