I have often wondered why it is so hard to hang on to gratitude. I mean, why is it that the first response to every minute of our day isn’t, “Wow. Just think of all the gifts of life that I have?” I mean, when we stop and think about it, each breath is an incredible collection of biological gifts. With each breath, the body assimilates the various components of that breath and distributes them to the various parts of the body to keep us going. And that is just one little thing among the many things that keep us alive each minute.

But, even with these and thousands of incredible gifts of each day, we are sometimes overcome by discontent. We look around us and there are many more things we lack than what we have. We look at those who seem to have life together better than do we. We look at all the gadgets advertised incessantly and think how good life would be if we just had more of them. We look at the lovely people in the media and think how many things would make us look better and have the gifts that they seem to have.

So, maybe because we always lack more than we have, we will always have a level of discontent. We will always look out and see what else we might be and either work to become more than we are or just be distressed because we do not have all the attributes that we would like to have.

And if this is true, maybe that is why we need to stop and worship regularly. For worship is the regular reminder that we are recipients of grace beyond our own deserving. It is a reminder that while there is much that we don’t have, what we do have is incredibly amazing. And if we regularly stop to remember that, maybe what we lack won’t be so powerful in shaping our attitude toward the life we live.