“Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.” Psalm 107:21
For quite some time, I lived life simply consuming the things that life had to offer without attributing them to God. Honestly, I just didn’t give God much thought. Yet, when I became a Christian, it was like someone turned on the lights for the first time. Suddenly I was aware of God’s presence and that He was a good God who created me to share life with Him. I remember that shortly after I became a Christian, I sat down for breakfast one morning and had a simple bowl of cereal in front of me. Suddenly, I felt joy and gratitude welling up inside of me like I had not before as I thought about eating a bowl of cereal. Somehow, I was no longer simply eating a bowl of cereal, I was enjoying part of God’s creation. This new experience of spontaneous joy and gratitude was so simple and yet profound for me. I was no longer alone.
I resonate with what C.S. Lewis writes in his Reflections on the Psalms saying, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”
When I sat down for that simple bowl of cereal, suddenly the same bowl of cereal had a different flavor to it. It was the flavor of offering thanksgiving because now I was sharing my breakfast with God. This fellowship with God makes breakfast and life in general so much sweeter. God doesn’t simply desire us to be grateful as an obligation, but because He wants us to enjoy life at its fullest, recognizing it as a gift from Him, and for us to share it joyfully with Him as a friend.
Take some time to slow down this week and recognize the fingerprints of God upon the things that you enjoy. Don’t simply consume them, turn to God in gratitude and share your joy with Him. Even the simplest things in life can become a moment of wonder as we realize that each is only possible because of our good, wonderful, and creative God.