Bob Tamasy: Trite But True: An Attitude Of Gratitude

“Son, you better change your attitude!” I heard my parents say this to me more than once while I was growing up. I wasn’t a particularly rebellious kid but was known for sometimes stomping up the stairs to my room when I didn’t get my way.

Attitude issues don’t afflict only adolescents and teens. Just go to any store or restaurant and you’ll find lots of different attitudes on display. Some people are smiling and laughing, just getting a kick out of life in general. Some carry chips on their shoulders, daring you to knock them off. Some wear scowls, whether reflective of their tough lives or difficulties they’re presently encountering. Maybe they made the mistake of watching the news to launch their day. Talk about mood killers!

The thing about attitudes is that we choose them; they don’t choose us. If you find yourself in a mud puddle covered with mud, you can either stay there all muddled or get out and start cleaning up. It works the same way with attitudes. If we feel an emotional shadow moving upon us, we can stay still waiting for it to envelope us or intentionally move out of the shadow.

This is why, trite as it sounds, I try to maintain what some speakers have labeled “an attitude of gratitude.” Perhaps conceived by some poet who didn’t know it, it’s been repeated so much it has turned into a handy cliché. But there’s validity to it.

Almost every day, even before I get out of bed, I repeat the verse, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). Recognizing God has given us another day of life – which many people didn’t get – and that He’s in the middle of all we’ll be doing, we can choose to rejoice and be glad, no matter what. In short, adopt an attitude of gratitude as we enter the new day with its possibilities and challenges.

If there ever was someone who could have justified having a bad attitude, it was the apostle Paul. After his conversion, he zealously set out to serve the Lord and proclaim to others the good news of Jesus Christ. His “reward,” it seemed, was one calamity after another.

In 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 Paul described a litany of episodes that certainly didn’t reflect a life lived in the lap of luxury: “I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods…stoned…shipwrecked…in danger…I have known hunger and thirst…cold and naked.” Wow – and you thought you were having a bad day!

Would you expect someone who went through all these things to serve as Exhibit A for having an attitude of gratitude? And yet this was the same man who exhorted Christ followers in the ancient city of Philippi, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).

Paul wasn’t singling out the folks in Philippi. He also unequivocally admonished believers in another Greek city, Thessalonica, “Be joyful always…give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Without question, we can find many reasons for doing just the opposite. We don’t have to look hard. Unfulfilled goals and unrealized dreams. Personal sorrows. Unmet expectations. Not to mention the current state of social unrest, troubled economy, political grandstanding, and a seemingly endless progression of downers that describe life in the 21^st century. Nevertheless, reading the Scriptures we find no exceptions, no exclusion clauses.

Instead, we’re to do as 2 Corinthians 4:18 commands: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

In the world around us the mantra might seem to be, “If you can’t say something bad…don’t say anything at all.” But as disciples of Christ, we’re offered the alternative: “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:13).

We’re to look up – and forward – to a glorious future in eternity rather than becoming consumed by dismal elements of the present. If we do that, we can feel and exhibit a genuine attitude of gratitude, no faking required.

* * *