Cultivating Gratitude

Imagine you fall off the side of an ocean liner and, not knowing how to swim, begin to drown. Someone on the deck spots you, flailing in the water and throws you a life preserver. It lands directly in front of you and, just before losing consciousness, you grab hold for dear life.

They pull you up onto the deck, and you cough the water out of your lungs. People gather around, rejoicing that you are safe and waiting expectantly while you regain your senses. After you finally catch your breath, you open your mouth and say: "Did you see the way I grabbed onto that life preserver? How tightly I held on to it? I was all over that thing!"

Needless to say, it would be a bewildering and borderline insane response. To draw attention to the way you cooperated with the rescue effort denigrates the whole point of what happened, which is that you were saved.

A much more likely chain of events is that you would immediately seek out the person who threw the life preserver, and you would thank them. Not just superficially, either. You would embrace them, ask them their name, invite them to dinner and maybe give them your cabin!
‘Law & Gospel’ (Mockingbird Ministries, 2015), page 73

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. Titus 3:4-5.

Kelsy Richardson, who is currently conducting graduate research on ‘gratitude’ at Fuller Seminary, named pride as a major deterrent to gratitude said, “When you believe you deserve the good things you receive, you don’t feel the need to be grateful to others.”

“Without effort, feelings of gratitude are often fleeting, passing as quickly as they come. For example, I’m grateful to have a clean bill of health but gripe as soon as a cold interferes with my busy life. I have a kitchen filled with food but complain about cooking and a closet filled with clothes but, “nothing to wear.” Tiffany Musik Matthews

Research suggests that gratitude can’t simply be grouped with other emotions, like happiness or anger, because unlike other emotions, gratitude takes a conscious effort. In order to be grateful, we must first take the time to recognize that something has been done for our benefit. The culture’s prevalent attitude, ‘of what have you done for me lately,’ reflects expectation not gratitude.

Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at UC Davis says, “Feeling grateful is not the same as being a grateful person, a grateful person is one who regularly affirms the goodness in his or her life and recognizes that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside of themselves.” Notice Emmons says that gratefulness does not come from us or because of us.

In today’s age of entitlement many have come to expect that their lives should have less discomfort, but we are not God and cannot guarantee what we desire. Being truly grateful extends beyond our own convenience. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. With gratitude you accept life as it is and are grateful for what you have.

The evidence is clear that cultivating gratitude in our lives makes us happier and healthier people. As receivers of salvation and divine grace, we should strive to be grateful in all seasons of our lives.


In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.  Brother David Steindl-Rast