If I were to ask ‘What are you thankful for?’ the first image that might come to your mind is an American or Canadian Thanksgiving meal. You know, we’ve all seen it on TV shows or movies, and perhaps we’ve experienced it ourselves. Everyone sitting around a dinner table laden with food sharing what they’re thankful for. It’s a holiday dedicated to gratitude. This is something we don’t have in Australia and perhaps as a result we’re not aware at what being grateful means.

Gratitude is an interesting idea, it seems like the older we get the less conscious we become of showing gratitude. A young child is taught to say please and thank you, almost as soon as they learn to talk. Adults will often admonish a child if they take something without saying thank you. It seems that this is one of the most fundamental life skills that we seek to teach children at a young age, yet as we get older, this insistence on showing gratitude seems to decrease.

Gratitude has been a theme we’ve been exploring many times in Chapel Services at Stanmore this year and teachers have also seen the importance in encouraging gratitude with the senior school boys. Perhaps it’s because as we get older the insistence on gratitude decreases.

See, no matter what age someone is we’re all pretty good at showing gratitude for the big things, like a new opportunity or a great major purchase. But I think we often forget to show our gratitude for the small things, like a freshly cooked meal or the children helping out around the house. Too often these small things can be something that we just expect or merely take for granted.

Jesus tells a parable in the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 20 about workers being hired at different times of the day from six in the morning right up until five in the evening. At the end of the day each one gets paid the same daily wage, with no regard for how long they worked, because that was what was agreed to when they were hired. Those that worked the longest were paid the same as those that only worked a couple of hours. The earlier workers were indignant feeling they deserved more. Instead of being grateful for what they received they felt a sense of entitlement.

I wonder how true this story is for our own experiences. How often do we take things for granted or worse expect to get something rather than being grateful for what we receive?

Many of you would be familiar with the work of The Wayside Chapel. Wayside, is an amazing Uniting Church organisation that works for the marginalised around Kings Cross in the city. Rev Graham Long, the Pastor of Wayside who’s finishing up this month, writes a weekly newsletter called the Inner Circle. Last week’s newsletter had a phrase that has stayed with me. As he was reflecting on his time at Wayside, Graham said that he was ‘Paralysed with Gratitude’.

This phrase has really stuck with me. How often are we ‘paralysed with gratitude’, so overwhelmed by all that we have to be grateful for that we are rendered metaphorically paralysed?

I think it’s important that everyone, adults and children alike, reflect on the question ‘what are you thankful for?’. More than that, we should seek to show that gratitude in our daily life. For our boys at Lindfield it’s important that they never forget to show that gratitude for the many great things in their life, both at home and at school, and that’s something that we should always try to encourage in them. But for us adults it’s also an important question to keep asking ourselves too. See if we paused to think of what we are thankful for we too might be paralysed with gratitude for all the many blessings in our lives.

Pastor La’Brooy