This article is in the July/August 2024 Issue 19 of Torah Sisters Magazine.

By Rachel Henderson

The longer I study classical thought on all the virtues, the more convinced I become that gratitude is the foundation of all other virtues.

Grateful people cannot be bitter, angry, resentful, or unhappy—or at least not for long. I phrased this as posture of gratitude because I do view it as the position in which we hold ourselves in our days, in our work, and in the world. To be grateful is to be aware of our position before the Creator at all times. We are the undeserving recipients of His creative efforts, His covenantal loyalty, and His perfect timing. But it’s easy to forget this in our culture of immediate gratification and unending pleasure. There are times when each of us feels discontented with what we have. But we must demonstrate to our children, our families, and our friends what it looks like to be a people marked by a posture of gratitude.

Here are two tips for when you feel discontent.

Read stories.

The best antidote I know for a lack of gratitude is to gain perspective. One of the consequences of inheriting relative wealth, relative to everyone anywhere else in the world and relative to everyone anywhere in history, is that we lack perspective. One easily accessible way to gain proper perspective is to read stories. Read as many and as varied stories as possible. Read them for you and read them for your children; their effects will be vast and profound. Stories mark us. That’s why the Bible is full of them!

One example is from a book I recently listened to, God’s Double Agent, by Bob Fu. His story details the amazing, heartbreaking, and harrowing adventure of growing up in Maoist Communist China. He stumbles upon Christianity in his youth and clings to it through imprisonment, persecution, and danger. He and his father eventually escaped to the United States. He says that his father struggled to assimilate into American culture for many reasons, but for one that I won’t forget. He could never understand why Americans grew decorative plants in their window boxes. Why would you not grow food on every square inch of land available? That kind of wealth, luxury, and ease was unfathomable to a peasant from China. He couldn’t even believe it when he saw it. So now, every day on my walks, I don’t just see window boxes. I see riches beyond the imagination of so many people. What a luxury we have to grow things just for beauty and not for sustenance. This is the perspective and gratitude that only a story can imprint on our hearts.

Compare your life to the less fortunate.

There will always be people who have more than us and people who have less. The key to maintaining a posture of gratitude is to spend our time and energy on those who have less than we do. First of all, to see if we can help. Secondly, it is a method of renewing our gratefulness and, usually, our happiness. If Yeshua came to show us how to live abundantly, then we ought to believe we are living abundant lives! And we are! This becomes obvious when we focus our attention on the less fortunate. We are responsible for directing our attention. So let’s direct it towards the people who need it more than we do. Our service, our gratitude, and our happiness will multiply exceedingly when we do. Our children need to experience the link between service, gratitude, and happiness. Our Creator has them inexplicably linked. It’s a Law of Nature worth knowing and leaning into!

If you study Scripture for any length of time, you’ll recognize what I call the grateful cycle. Or you recognize the lack of it and the destruction that leads to. This is what the grateful life looks like: We recognize Yah’s mercy in our lives. This leads to giving thanks. This leads us to praise Him. And the cycle repeats, over and over and over again. This is what I want for our children: a life full of gratefulness cycles. If we can demonstrate the cycle over and over again for our children, there isn’t much time left for discontent, bitterness, or resentfulness. Let’s illustrate for our children what it looks like to stay in regular wonder of His goodness in our lives. It’s there if you’re looking for it. I see it every day, in eggs crackling on the stove for breakfast, in a furnace that kicks on when it dips below zero on cold Michigan nights, in healthy, able bodies jumping on the trampoline, and in window box after window box planted with beautiful flowers, just because.

About Rachel

My name is Rachel, and I am a married, homeschooling Mom to 4 children. I believe we are put here to have simple and abundant lives. I am so grateful for Yah’s perfect instructions which pave the way to that abundance. I enjoy reading, writing, gardening and curating a simple and meaningful home for our family.