MARLYS ROOS|GUEST

Have you ever played Doublets? It’s a simple word game, requiring only paper and pencil.

Doublets was created by math professor, Charles L. Dodgson, (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland) in the late 1870s. The object of the game is to transform one word into an opposite term of the same length, one letter at a time, in as few steps as possible. It’s easy to change “dog” into “cat” or “heads” into “tails.” Advanced players transform longer words with more steps. Although “grumbling” and “gratitude” are both nine-letter words, I’m not sure grumbling can be transformed using Dodgson’s method. It takes divine intervention.

Getting It Backwards

Yet turning gratitude into grumbling is easy (though not in Doublets). It’s been part of our nature since the serpent in Genesis 3 twisted God’s words to make Eve question God’s goodness. Adam and Eve had everything: the perfect life with no illness, death, troubles, or shame, plus they had the physical presence of God to walk with them. What more could they have wanted? But there was that one thing they didn’t have, couldn’t have (v.3). So, Satan contorted the truth, infected them with the first case of FOMO, and turned their gratitude into grumbling.

We humans start grumbling early. In young children it may begin as fussiness but can turn into seemingly endless wails. Only with effort, instruction, and infinite reminders do we learn to express gratitude, though often our “thanks” is offered begrudgingly or mindlessly.

Even unfelt expressions of thanks seem to be less frequent these days. There’s little mention of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. More attention is given to the day after as the start of the gift-buying season. And when was the last time you received a handwritten thank-you note? Perhaps I’m grumbling, but how must our ingratitude pierce the heart of God.

Thanklessness

Jesus alluded to the hurt in Luke 17:17-18. He had just healed ten lepers but only one had returned to thank Him. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” You can almost hear the ache in His voice. Once again, His people had taken from Him without a simple “Thank You.”

Oh, how often I do the same. The Lord provides, and I just move on, or worse—demand the next thing on my list. How, like a child who has been “taught better,” I pierce my Father’s heart. And He has “taught us better” throughout His Word. Scripture, particularly in the Psalms and epistles of Paul, instructs us to give thanks to the Lord—for all things, in every circumstance! Sadly, I confess, I haven’t.

Pains to Pearls

This was made painfully clear to me at the memorial service for a friend’s mother. I knew she was a special, gracious lady, but I had not known the extent. I had witnessed the care she gave her husband for almost forty years after he suffered a massive brain injury in a car wreck, but I had not known the plethora of sorrows she had faced before and even after that accident.

I cannot do justice to her story, but as her daughter explained how each cause for grumbling or irritation had become a pearl by her mother’s sense of gratitude for the Lord, my heart was crushed by my own ingratitude. Whenever asked how she could carry such burdens, my friend’s mother always replied she was thankful for what the Lord had given her and for His sacrifice on the cross.

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever! (Ps. 118:29). Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples! (1 Chron. 16:8). And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Col. 3:17).

This piece is adapted from a post that originally appeared in the Daily Treasure Devotional.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash