Thankfulness and Thanksgiving
Is there a difference between “being thankful” and “giving thanks”?
There is a way to hide behind “thankfulness” to avoid “thanksgiving,” and we should be aware of it.
In Col. 4:2, Paul gives instructions about prayer:
“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving” is a noun describing an activity. “Give thanks in your prayers”, he says, and this will help you to be “watchful,” or to “stay awake.” It will keep you focused on the right things. It will clear your mind.
But sometimes I fear we can divide the two terms. To be thankful is unseen and internal. “Oh sure, I’m thankful, but don’t make me say it.” This is like “being sorry” for something, but lacking the courage to admit it outloud. To “give thanks,” on the other hand, is to express that thanks. “Thank you!” “I thank you, God, for these gifts.”
There is a difference between the feeling of thankfulness and the expression of thanksgiving. Until we have spoken our thanks to God in prayer, or our thanks to God for another person, or our thanks directly to that person — the feeling is unsteady, changeable, and (if we are honest) can be pressed into service for our own selfish ends.
Thanksgiving impresses the feeling into us by giving it a time and date, a concrete moment in which our thankfulness comes out.
The opposite of thanksgiving, I would suggest, is entitlement. When we give thanks, we acknowledge a gift. But when a gift goes un-thanked, we begin to assume that we deserve it, that it is our right, and that if anyone (including God) takes it away, they have wronged us. You might start saying something similar to Smeagol, “It is my birthday present…my precious.”
“Why have they not given me the credit I deserve?”
“Why hasn’t God altered my circumstances for the better?”
“I don’t deserve this to happen to me.”
But here is how the Psalmist calls himself to give thanks, Psalm 103:2,
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits…”
The exhortation for today, then, is to give thanks, to tell God and other people about the good you have received from him.
Thanksgiving is not content with a mere sense of thankfulness, but wants to express itself. And the practice of thanksgiving saves us from a paralyzing and inward-turning sense of entitlement — of which we are all susceptible, and which reminds us of our need to confess our sins:
Our heavenly Father, how easy it is for us to forget your gifts. Forgive us for how we are stingy with our thanks, both to you and to others, for our forgetfulness about how you uphold us every moment, and for our sense that we deserve better.
Because you are the giver of all good gifts and because you have shown your love and mercy to us in Jesus Christ, to avoid giving thanks is a great evil in us. Be merciful to us, we pray, and lead us in this time of silent confession…