Psalm 119:7 "I will thank thee with an unfeigned heart,  when I shall have learned the judgements of thy righteousness."

It is of great significance that the Greek word "Eucharist" means "thanksgiving." A good Sunday afternoon activity would be to sit down with the prayer book and meditate on all of the sentences in the Order for Holy Communion in which a form of the word "thank" is used (by my count, 14). Just as we express great thankfulness at the Lord's Table for the invitation to feast with HIm, we should abide every other moment of our lives in profound gratitude to the Triune God. We owe thanks to the Father for creating us and sending His Beloved Son for our sakes. We owe thanks to the Son for humbling Himself to be born and live as one of us (yet without sin) and then to die a painful, ignoble death. We owe thanks to the Holy Spirit for indwelling and sanctifying us.

But what happens to our gratitude when life is not as we expected it to be? A job is lost, a loved one dies, a friend betrays—such events can make us approach both our lives and the Table of our Lord with resentment instead of gratitude.

It is at those times when we should remember what a consummate liar Satan is. He approached Eve, to whom God had given life and everything needed to sustain it in joy, and he made her believe that God was withholding the one thing that would make her perfectly happy. In short, Eve was deceived into losing the joy of gratitude.

Let us purpose in our hearts not to lose that joy. We will have sorrow in this world, but our Lord will not ask us to live without anything or anyone that we truly need to survive. He gives us Himself, in His Word, in His Body and Blood, in His Holy Spirit, and in His Church. Such a gift demands our "unfeigned thanks," in the words of the Thanksgiving from Family Evening Prayer:

To our prayers, O Lord, we join our unfeigned thanks for all thy mercies; for our being, our reason, and all other endowments and faculties of soul and body; for our health, friends, food, and raiment, and all the other comforts and conveniences of life. Above all, we adore thy mercy in sending thine only Son into the world, to redeem us from sin and eternal death, and in giving us the knowledge and sense of our duty towards thee. We bless thee for thy patience with us, notwithstanding our many and great provocations; for all the directions, assistances, and comforts of thy Holy Spirit; for thy continual care and watchful providence over us through the whole course of our lives; and particularly for the mercies and benefits of the past day; beseeching thee to continue these thy blessings to us, and to give us grace to show our thankfulness in a sincere obedience to his laws; through whose merits and intercession we received them all, thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

In Christ,

Dss Teresa Johnson

President, Women of the Church
Diocese of Mid-America

dsstrj at dmawomen.org