Dear Amy,
How can our thankfulness glorify the Lord?
I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.
― Psalm 69:30
There’s an aspect to thankfulness that I want to explore this week, which is this: receiving kindness from those around us as from the Lord.
When someone treats me with particular kindness, who am I likely to thank? Too often we think in purely human terms, but there’s another dimension here.
Here’s one side of the coin.
For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.
― Philippians 2:13
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
― Ephesians 2:10
The Lord has plans and purposes, and he works in and through each one of us to fulfil them. He works even in the lives of those who neither honour nor acknowledge him. We know this. Now consider the other side of that coin.
Recall that the Lord delights in exercising kindness (Jeremiah 9:24)⸺this is one of his good purposes! So when we receive kindness from others, why would we not make that connection and ascribe it to him? To do so makes my soul sing in gratitude to my Saviour.
Recently I experienced exactly this, twice.
On one occasion I was in church, after the morning service. Church can be the loneliest place, and I was facing the bleak prospect of a Sunday afternoon by myself, at a time when I was particularly downcast. Just outside church and completely out of the blue, a friend invited me mountain biking that afternoon, in a way that seemed so random and so kind.
The other was on my birthday, and I was at home in a melancholic mood. Suddenly there was a knock on my back door. It was my neighbour, with a slice of apple shortcake she had just made, and a little tub of cream to go with it. How lovely. She had no idea it was my birthday, nor did I tell her. How random again.
I have learned that these random acts of kindness are not remotely random. I ascribe them to my Heavenly Father, and thank him. And through these he makes known his own character, his overflowing kindness, and he is glorified.
Praise God’s name in song, Amy, and glorify him with thanksgiving! 🙏