When Good Things Happen to Good People
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Psalm 34
Let’s pray:
“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Lord, we thank you. Amen.
[powerpress]Last week I shared about when good things happen to bad people and how that can challenge our faith and we learned from Asaph and Psalm 73 the value of continuing to seek the Lord in the midst of our daily challenges. Today I want to talk about when good things happen to good people. What do we do then? What should our response be? The answer lies in part in something we all should have learned before we attended kindergarten.
There are a couple of magic words that are among the first we are taught, they are…”Please,” and “Thank you.” “Please” is a word we use when making a request. “Thank you” is a phrase we speak when we have received something, when a request has been granted or a kindness has been done. We say “Thank you” when we are grateful, when we are thankful for someone or something. But “saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality.” Alfred Painter
I like the movie Groundhog Day and in it, Bill Murray’s character is stuck in Puxtawney, PA reliving Groundhog Day over and over. In one scene he makes sure he arrives under the same tree every day just in time to catch a boy who falls out of a tree he is climbing. Murray catches him, and the kid runs away. Murray yells after him, “You have never once thanked me!” And reaches for his aching back and says, “See you tomorrow…maybe.” I wonder if the Lord feels like that sometimes, when we keep falling out of trees and the Lord keeps showing up to catch us.. do we remember to say, “Thank you.”
I grew up with the family motto, “Do good and forget it.” But the truth is, when we do something good we like to be thanked for it. I am not saying that is right or the way it should be, I just know it is true, at least for me, much of the time. For example, when we kindly let someone make a turn or merge in summer traffic, we wait for the acknowledgment, the wave, like a seagull waiting for a French fry outside a clam shack. We hunger for it. When someone waves and smiles and is grateful, we’re happy we made them happy. When they ignore us and don’t even acknowledge our kindness, we’re happy we made them happy…well actually sometimes we aren’t, some of us probably are disappointed or even a little upset. I mean for goodness sake, how much time and effort does it take to say, “Thank you!” “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” -William Arthur Ward
Human nature is such, that we want people to be appropriately grateful and thankful to us and we’re sometimes hurt when they aren’t, yet we also frequently fall short in thanking others for what they do for us. This same dynamic is also at work in our relationship with God and it’s illustrated in the Book of Psalms in an interesting way. Fully about a third of the Psalms in our Bible, close to 50, are laments, they are complaints, they are requests, they are, “Please, God…” Guess how many of the psalms are Individual Psalms of Thanksgiving, are basically, “Thank you, God.” Only 10 out of 150. So basically in the Psalms, people are four to five times more likely to ask God for something than to thank God for having responded.
Do we imagine God to be that different from ourselves when it comes to being thanked? God loves to hear, “Thank you,” just as much as we do, perhaps even more, because the Lord hears “please” a whole lot more than we can possibly imagine. In the movie Bruce Almighty Jim Carrey’s character gets to see what it is like to be in God’s place and he is totally overwhelmed by all the prayers asking for help. There aren’t many “Thank you” prayers filling his inbox. What about you? What would you say your ratio of “Please, God” prayers to “Thank you, Lord,” prayers is right now? Is there room for you to grow in expressing thanksgiving and gratitude, to have a little more balance in your prayer life and your attitude?
When good things happen to good people, the Psalms teach us our response is thanksgiving, praise and gratitude. That is a difference between being an atheist and a person of faith. When something great happens to atheists, they have no one to thank! We do and we should. William A. Ward wrote, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” Meister Eckhart wrote centuries ago, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.”
Psalm 34 is a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from trouble. It is saying, “Thank you, Lord.” We’ve heard the first 10 verses so we pick it up at verse 11. Psalm 34:
1 I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.
3 O magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.
4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me,
and delivered me from all my fears.
5 Look to him, and be radiant;
so your faces shall never be ashamed.
6 This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord,
and was saved from every trouble.
7 The angel of the Lord encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
8 O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who take refuge in him.
9 O fear the Lord, you his holy ones,
for those who fear him have no want.
10 The young lions suffer want and hunger,
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
11 Come, O children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
12 Which of you desires life,
and covets many days to enjoy good?
13 Keep your tongue from evil,
and your lips from speaking deceit.
14 Depart from evil, and do good;
seek peace, and pursue it.
15 The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their cry.
16 The face of the Lord is against evildoers,
to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,
and rescues them from all their troubles.
18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord rescues them from them all.
20 He keeps all their bones;
not one of them will be broken.
21 Evil brings death to the wicked,
and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
22 The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”
John Henry Jowett (1864-1923) an excellent preacher at the end of the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries wrote,
“Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion.
Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception.
Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.”
To say that positively, if less poetically, thankfulness adds love, passion, fine perception, strength, and fortitude to our life, hope, and faith and enables us to stride confidently and joyfully along the spiritual road of life. We see this described in Psalm 34 which begins, “I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”
If we are to imitate the thankful spirit of this Psalm then notice immediately in verse one that we are to bless, we are to praise, we are to thank the Lord when? “At all times, continually.” Is this our practice? Do we find this easy to do? Of course not. There are some situations in life when our first thought is not going to be “Thanks, God.” In our church softball game Friday night I was getting ready to field a hard hit ground ball when it took a bad hop and hit me in the shoulder and then on the side of my head. My first thought was not “Thanks, God.” However, after a minute or so as I kept playing the thought did go through my mind, “I’m thankful that didn’t hit me in the mouth or my face.” Choosing to look at life through eyes of thankfulness will color our perspective.
When I was a young child one of the coolest things to get was a new box of Crayola Crayons. You’d open it and there were all these bright shiny colors all sharp and brand new just waiting to be used. A friend of mine wrote me recently saying, “If the good and bad “things” of life are like colors, most of us may need a little help to be grateful for the whole spectrum…and help for our eyes to see the bright colors and the good even when it appears there are none; when we don’t “see” anything to be grateful for; when life hurts and each day seems to hurt more; when there are too many “curveballs’ and it feels dark and lonely. There is “good” all the time, even when we feel good is invisible and we are experiencing so much hard stuff, we are unable to see past it.”
To quote John Henry Jowett again, “Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.” Gratitude and thankfulness expressed at all times, continually, changes and colors how we see the world because our focus is on what is good rather than what is bad, on what we have rather than on what we lack, on what we can still look forward to rather than on what we have lost. What do you see when you open the box of crayons that is your life? Where is your eye drawn? What do you focus on?
Psalm 34 acknowledges that even if we fear the Lord, even if we seek to have a relationship with God and to be good, godly women and men there will be challenging times. We will have “fears” and “troubles” (verses 4 & 6) like other people. The difference is, the psalm says, that the angel of the Lord will be near us to deliver us in our troubles and fears. Verse 8 is a favorite of mine,
“O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who take refuge in him.
How does one taste the Lord – that sounds a little strange doesn’t it?
I think what taste and see is trying to convey is the importance of religious experience. Does God really hear our prayers? Try the Lord & see.
Is God able to give us strength in temptation? Try the Lord & see.
Can God give us victory over sin? Try the Lord & see.
Can God comfort us in our sorrow? Try the Lord & see.
Taste and see, means, try the Lord and see if God is faithful as the Lord says.
When we can say, “I turned to the Lord and this is what God did for me,” that strengthens our faith and the faith of other people. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” Thankfulness and gratitude tend to be infectious as are ingratitude and thanklessness. Maybe it takes more effort to work at being thankful and expressing gratitude but it feels better and it makes us more pleasant to be around. It seems like some folks work for the international conglomerate Thanklessness Incorporated, whose sole purpose is to stamp out feelings and expressions of gratitude and thankfulness and instead go through life grumping, complaining, and taking good things for granted. Numerous passages in the Bible tell us some people choose to live that way (Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:1-17; Psalm 95:7b-11; Psalm 106:32-33; 1 Corinthians 10:9-11), but the scriptures also teach us that should not be our way of life. We are to be people of praise, thankfulness, and gratitude. The importance and power behind expressing heartfelt gratitude for the many blessings in life that are often times overlooked and taken for granted is hard to overstate. Choosing a consistent focus of heartfelt gratitude and appreciation elevates and enhances the quality of our life.
Like many Old Testament passages Psalm 34:13-14 affirms the belief that worship without obedience is not pleasing to God. It says if you want to have a good and long life, then you are to live obediently. “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” Psalm 34 also speaks repeatedly about the importance of the fear of the Lord, regarding the Lord with the awe and respect that God deserves – which motivates us to live as God desires and to draw near to our Creator. The psalm states the people who do that and seek to live obediently will find the Lord is near, the Lord hears, the Lord rescues, the Lord saves, the Lord redeems, the Lord is a refuge.
Verses 9-10 say, “Those who fear him have no want…those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” We have to confess that is not a realistic picture of life – there are millions of Christians around the world who fear the Lord yet face poverty, hunger and homelessness. Those verses are balanced by verse 19 that states simply and directly, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” Regardless of our circumstances our hope lies in the same kind of trusting, thankful faith in God that Psalm 34 expresses. Concentration camp survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote, “No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” When thanksgiving and gratitude are shared they encourage those who are still in the darkness of “night.” Albert Schweitzer said, “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lit the flame within us.”
Psalm 34 is a song of thankfulness that seeks to light the flame of thankfulness in each of us reminding us how expressing gratitude helps us, encourages others and pleases the Lord. !9th century American preacher Henry Ward Beecher put it well, “Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.”
More great quotes about Thanksgiving and Gratitude
“If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get.” – Frank A. Clark
“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”-Eric Hoffer
“Let’s be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom.” – Marcel Proust
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” – Epictetus
“Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” -Margaret Cousins
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy
“To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.” -Albert Schweitzer
Homework:
Write your own individual song of thanksgiving.
Be very specific in your thanks.
See if you can pray an entire prayer just of thanks for blessings received.
Try going through a day looking for things to be thankful and thank God for them.