Mini-Series
Last week we worked on seeing what we actually have.
This week I want to push harder. Because gratitude when things are going well is not particularly difficult or interesting. The thing worth examining is gratitude when they’re not.
The losing season. The injury. The season that isn’t what you hoped. What does gratitude look like there? And is it even the right thing to ask for?
Read this passage slowly.
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
In all circumstances. Not for all circumstances — Paul is not asking you to be grateful for suffering itself. In all circumstances — maintaining a posture of gratitude that is not contingent on the circumstances being favorable. That is a harder and more specific thing than the bumper-sticker version of thankfulness.
Here is what genuine gratitude in hard circumstances is not: it is not pretending the circumstances are better than they are. It is not performing thankfulness to appear spiritually mature. It is not denying the real difficulty of the situation. Gratitude that requires dishonesty about the circumstances is not gratitude — it is a performance of gratitude, which is actually a form of ingratitude because it treats the real situation as something to be hidden rather than something to be present in.
Genuine gratitude in hard circumstances is the capacity to hold the difficulty honestly and still find, alongside it, things that are real and good and worth acknowledging. The team that is struggling and still genuinely grateful for what it has is a different team than the one that is either falsely positive or genuinely bitter. The gratitude doesn’t deny the struggle. It keeps the struggle from consuming everything else.
That takes practice. The circumstances don’t cooperate with it. The cultivation of gratitude in difficulty is an act of will that has to be chosen repeatedly until it becomes a habit of attention.
Genuine gratitude in hard circumstances holds the difficulty honestly and still finds, alongside it, things that are real and good. It keeps the struggle from consuming everything else.
What is something in this current season — even if the season is hard — that you are genuinely grateful for? Not what you should be grateful for. What you actually are.
The distinction between genuine and performed gratitude matters here. Push for the honest answer rather than the expected one.
Give thanks in all circumstances. Not for them. In them. That is a different and harder thing.
This session lands most powerfully when the team is in a genuinely hard stretch. The easy-season version of this conversation is less formative.