Just another bumper sticker?

Bumper stickers are faddish, they capture today’s popular phrase but it won’t take long until you’re trying to peel it off your car.

One bumper sticker I’m glad to see gone is “Practice random acts of kindness.” It sounds nice, but the sentiment actually is quite shallow. It highlights the fact we tend to be so lacking in kindness we need to purposely practice random acts of it. There’s something far superior to outbursts of kindness, and that is to be a kind person.

A similar situation revolves around Thanksgiving, which millions of people will celebrate tomorrow through random acts of gluttony. It’s a day on which we’re encouraged to “give thanks.” It’s a good encouragement for all of us, as we tend to lack expressing thanks like we lack in expressing kindness. But there’s something far superior to simply giving thanks, and that is being a grateful person.

There’s more than just semantics to that. It’s one thing to occasionally pause and direct yourself to an expression of thankfulness; it’s quite another to be a person who lives out life from a grateful heart. Giving thanks is often a circumstantial event, and routinely misses more reasons for giving thanks than are moments stilled for it. Living from a grateful heart comes from seeing the grace and mercies of God afresh each day and, from that view, having our minds and hearts (and, therefore, our actions) shaped and directed by it — “grateful” becomes a part of who we are and how we live.

Being a genuinely grateful person was a dangerous thing for a small group of Americans held prisoner on a remote island in the South Pacific during World War II. Over the months of being starved with the most meager of food rations, one of the men saw the lovingkindness of God in the little food he had to sustain him. He was so grateful for his rations that he would not eat until he had bowed his head and gave thanks. His captors didn’t like this behavior, so they warned the man not to bow his head and pray in public.

The next day, at meal time, the soldier took his place on the bench, bowed his head and offered thanks. His disobedience was responded to with the butt end of a rifle to his head. The soldier fell unconscious to the floor and was dragged off to his bunk.

The next day, as the soldier entered the mess hall, looking dazed and moving slowly, his companions immediately encouraged him to sit down and eat without bowing his head. They warned him he couldn’t endure further assaults. The soldier sat down and looked at the sparse food rations on his tin plate. That there was anything at all to eat seemed to him to be a great gift from a loving God.

He bowed his head.

The butt end of a rifle collided with the solder’s skull, and he was dragged out.

He never returned.

For this soldier, it was unthinkable to not express his gratitude to God. Such a character of gratitude cost him his life.

A life he was grateful to God for.

This Thanksgiving, challenge yourself to do more than give thanks. Ask God to shape you into being a grateful person.

“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness” Colossians 2:6-7.

Scotty