Gratitude Trees

What more can be said than has been said about thankfulness? I’m thankful for how much we’ve talked about gratitude during our almost 15 years together as a church. I’m thankful that thankfulness doesn’t have a ceiling. Gratitude trees have no growth limits; their roots will break out of small pots if they have to.

And yet, let’s consider the potency of thankfulness again.

Nothing is more childlike, or manly, than giving thanks. Giving thanks might be the ultimate sign of childlike dependence on and submission to God, while also being a sign of maturity and agency for God.

Remember the command: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 ESV).

When we give thanks to God we submit to Him. It’s not just in the act of thanks, though He does command it. It’s in the humble affirmation that His sovereign will is good. People who give thanks for His sovereign work show childlike dependence on their Father. Their roots hold tight.

And those thankful people are the same people who are self-controlled. We wouldn’t call them independent, and yet they are untethered from grumbling, anxious, narrow-sighted ungratefulness. Anyone can be ungrateful. But if you can give “thanks always and for everything to God” (Ephesians 5:20), then no circumstance can be your master. Their leaves don’t wither.

What if TEC, as a church, had the reputation for being the tallest gratitude tree in the city? That would be impossible to ignore.