We have just finished celebrating Thanksgiving, and we are on the threshold of Advent. Every worship service, every Lord’s Day, culminates in our celebration of the Eucharist, which is the table of Thanksgiving.
In contrast, those who rebel against God in the first chapter of Romans are described as having two signature positions—their refusal to honor God as God, and their refusal to give Him thanks.
Our fundamental apologetic method, our basic evangelistic attitude, must therefore we gratitude. As an apologetic statement of the truth of the gospel, it is impossible to answer convincingly. Gratitude collides with grumbling. Thankfulness excludes murmuring. And St. Paul tells us that when we refrain from grumbling and complaining, we shine like lights in the firmament, bright stars against a jet black backdrop.
But such thanksgiving is a spiritual discipline. We learn how to do this; this is one of the reasons we present ourselves before the Lord this way, week after week.
God is prodigal with His blessings, and most of them whistle right by us, unremarked and unacknowledged. Learning how to acknowledge what you can see, as well as acknowledging that most of it is still invisible to us, is one of the great glories of this life. Learn to look forward to the resurrection as the time when a much greater percentage of your blessings will be visible to you.
As you do this, you are being fitted for heaven, and your time spent around nonbelievers will be exposing them to one of the creaturely obligations that they would most like to suppress. But they cannot suppress it, because there you are—grateful for your job, grateful for your kids and spouse, grateful for the size of your paycheck, grateful for how socks feel when you pull them up, grateful for a healthy liver, grateful that your building has heat, and grateful for your salvation.