Thankful for What I Receive and What I Escape

Finishing up reading through Nancy Leigh DeMoss's book Choosing Gratitude. I read the book a couple of years ago as well during the Thanksgiving season, and God used Nancy to help me understand the importance of the attitude of gratitude, no matter my circumstances or feelings. I've come to realize that times when I pray and don't receive what I desire are in reality avenues of escape -- because God is sovereign and sees the beginning to the end. He may be shielding me from the consequences of what I desire, even though in itself and otherwise it may be a good thing. I long to view much more through the eyes of thankfulness. I'd like to share something that Nancy wrote that spoke to my heart.

Matthew Henry, the eighteenth-century Puritan preacher whose Bible commentary remains among the most popular of all time, was accosted by robbers while living in London.

Perhaps you've experienced this yourself--whether by having your car broken into or coming home to discover that your house had been burglarized. It's among the most unsettling things that can happen to a person. I'm sure it was, as well, for a quiet, thoughtful man of letters like Matthew Henry.

And yet, upon further reflection (as he wrote in his diary), he couldn't help but find something to be thankful for as a result of his misfortune: 

Let me be thankful, first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed. 

What a perspective! As someone has said, "If you can't be thankful for what you receive, be thankful for what you escape."

It is simply true that the person who has chosen to make gratitude his or her mind-set and lifestyle can view anything -- anything! -- through the eyes of thankfulness. The whole world looks different when we do. And the one whose gratitude is Christian gratitude -- directed not toward good genes or good timing but toward God Himself--finds that she deepens her relationship with Him on many levels.

 ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss from Choosing Gratitude


Painting ~ Sweet Solitude 1919, Edmund Blaire Leighton 1852-1922
Wikipedia Commons public domain