SAYING “THANK YOU”

The words flow easily and readily from our lips, most of the time: “Thank you”. Someone had done something for us, given something to us, said a kind word about us and we say to them, “Thank you”. We are not merely responding in a rote sort of way. We are sincere. We are truly thankful and so we tell the one who had blessed us in whatever way that blessing has taken place that we are indeed thankful.

There are also times in our lives when those two words almost choke us. We know they need to be said because we are almost loathe to utter them, especially to that person. A teenager angry with is parents because they said “no” to his demands only to realize later, perhaps much, much later, they were right in denying his request finds it quite difficult to say thank you: human nature and teenage rebellion rolled into one being the cause.

A co-worker who tends to drive us up the wall helps us out of a mess of our own making and words of thanks must be said; yet we find it difficult to say those words because of the person involved. Both when we are sincere in our thanks and when we sincerely wish we did not have to give thanks, the issues at hand are pride and humility.

Our pride often holds us back from saying thank you because it is an admission that we needed whatever the other has given us, blessed us with – her time, his talent, her financial resources. We would like to believe that we can do it all on our own, whatever it is that we want to do. Having to admit that we cannot and having to rely on others to help us, all of that or some of that wounds our pride and we do not like it, human nature, again, being what it is. Humility comes hard, sometimes very, very hard.

Yet even when our pride is not at stake, when we are quite thankful for what has been given us, when we are overjoyed and enthusiastically and loudly proclaim our honest thanks, humility is still front and center, whether we realize it our not. For humility is the admission that, in this life, anyway, we cannot go it alone, that we need others for us to make it through this life, for us to be the person God created us to be and the person we want to be.

There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there is everything right. Sometimes is takes a simple act of kindness and a very simple “thank you” for us to realize just how much we need one another, how important relationships are, whatever those relationships may be. We were never meant to be alone or to go it alone. In fact, according to Genesis, God’s first observation about the creature God had created was that it was not good for this person to be alone.

Our “thank you”, no matter how willingly or how grudgingly those words come from our lips, are a reminder that we are in this together – this life, this world, even in this faith community. Our pride holds us back from full participation. It is only when we are humble enough to say “thank you” and begin to understand just what staying those two words really say that we can begin to realize just how important it is to be in communion and community with one another.