FELELING LUCKY OR BEING GRATEFUL?

Lillian Daniel, a Congregationalist pastor, in her delightful and thoughtful book of essays, When Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Enough: Seeing God In Surprising Places, Even the Church, has this to say about having, in my words, an “attitude of gratitude” as opposed to “feeling lucky”: “While I think God does want us to feel gratitude, I do not think God particularly wants us to feel lucky. I think God wants us to witness pain and suffering and, rather than feeling lucky, God wants us to get angry and want to do something about it.”

She goes on to explain: “Gratitude is a biblically commended attitude. Feeling lucky is another religion altogether, one that says the gods pick one teenager to live in the suburbs of the richest nation on earth and another teenager to starve.” She has a lot more to say to this culture of ours where so many people claim to be “spiritual but not religious”, which, to me, is a code word for not having to respond to the needs of those who are in need while allowing one to feel good about oneself. Balderdash!

But I slightly digress. We are indeed blessed, you and I. Anyone who reads this is blessed. It means that you and I have the financial means to purchase computers, Internet accessibility, cell phones and all the rest. What we as a nation spend on these conveniences in one year, none of which are truly necessary to live in the world, could feed thousands of starving people, perhaps eliminate poverty altogether. Perhaps.

And perhaps none of us would call ourselves “lucky” but would honestly admit that we are indeed very, very blessed; blessed to live in this country and be able to afford all that we have and certainly more than we would ever need. Our needs are quite adequately filled and our wants are filled to overflowing, whether we admit to that truth or not. The downside of being so blessed and not recognizing that what we have is a blessing and is more than enough is that we worry that we don’t have enough, that we need more. Then we pursue the more and never enjoy what we have.

The upside of being so blessed is that it allows us to stand back, recognize just how blessed we truly are, and then give thanks for our blessing by developing an attitude of gratitude. Such an attitude pushes us into actively responding to the needs of those who, for whatever reason there is, have been less blessed. We waste our time both trying to understand why we have been blessed and others have not or trying to find a reason why those who, for instance, have no food are personally at fault. What is is what is: a person is in need; we have been blessed; we are thankful that we can help, and then we do what we can.

An attitude of gratitude demands an active response. Feeling lucky is simply a feeling and no more and almost prevents us from responding, if it does not actually do so. It is easy to lambast those who are so blessed and yet do nothing because they believe luck (and God?) is on their side. That is an issue they have to deal with. Our issue as grateful believers, as followers of Jesus, is to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves if our gratitude makes us angry enough to actually respond to those in need.