Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling…
2 Peter 1:10

Gratefulness. It’s a quality God’s been cultivating in me ever since his Holy Spirit started to rooting out my tendency to complain occasionally. Or maybe I should say often. All right, daily. To be perfectly honest, hourly. Even minute-ly, to coin a new word.

Compliments of the inner nudging of the Holy Spirit, which can leave my innards a bit bruised and battered (Oops…complaining again!), I am learning to recognize and thank God for his many graces: a loving husband, good health, travel safety, a warm house, financial stability, friends, our children doing well, the cutest grandson in the world, and unexpected career opportunities.

In fact, my capacity to recognize God’s grace and practice gratefulness has increased so much that the other day I interrupted my prayer time several times administer self-congratulatory pats on my back.

About the time the pat-a-thon ended, a radio report mentioned polio outbreaks among Syrian refugee children and in Somalia. My mind flashed back fifty years to my school gymnasium, where my classmates and I took sugar cubes tinted pink with polio vaccine from a tray, put them in our mouths, and savored the sweetness melting on our tongues. Tears came to my eyes, and I wept for children in Syria and Somalia, where fifty years after the first polio vaccines were administered in our country, war has halted such programs in theirs.

The Holy Spirit used that news report to reveal the shallowness of my gratitude. Had I ever thanked God for being vaccinated for polio? For living in a country peaceful enough to offer basic health care to children? For the school where the vaccine was administered? For a safe and healthy childhood? No, I had never thanked God for his avalanche of grace throughout my life.

The Holy Spirit kept rooting around, nudging me to go deeper until I finally asked, “Why? God, why have you given so many gifts to one so undeserving? Why have you opened so many doors? Why have you provided so many resources and opportunities? God, what are you calling me to do with this great bounty?”

With that question I reached the place God wants his children to find: beyond grateful. In that place he reveals how to use his gifts as the means for his redemptive work. To use them to draw near to the brokenhearted, to minister to those crushed in spirit next door and around the world.

So a few weeks from now, when the loved ones at your table reflect upon what they’re thankful for this Thanksgiving, challenge them–and yourself–to go beyond grateful and ask God to reveal what he’s calling you to do with his gifts.
He may call you to give shoes to barefoot people in the Congo, send Christmas boxes to needy children, support missionaries in Latvia. Who knows? One day, he may call you to deliver polio vaccines to children in war torn countries like Syria and Somalia. Because God’s people go beyond grateful, he does amazing things through them and his gifts.

Photo Credit: www,freedigitalphotos.net