Gratitude Or Grumbling?

IT WAS LATE when I returned to my hotel room. As I kicked off my heels, I heard a baby crying through the paper-thin wall separating my room from my neighbors’. My plan to turn up the air to block the noise failed, since the room’s thermostat didn’t work. But at least it was time for both the baby and me to call it a night. What a full day: two flights, a late lunch with hosts, a quick change of outfits, my turn to speak, meeting and greeting, and now sleep at last. Or so I thought. As the baby’s cries turned to whimpers, the lounge band several floors below began to play their greatest—and loudest—hits.

From birth, our natural inclination is to cry, whine, pout, and complain when life doesn’t go our way. Since our propensity for grumbling is a natural response to objectionable circumstances, a supernatural solution is required. But how do we resist the temptation to permit negative thoughts to give way to negative words that spread like gossip and lice? In order to endure my sleepless night, I needed grace. The same grace I counted on to impact my audience earlier that night would also rescue me from grumbling about annoying circumstances. God’s grace in verse form took up residence in my tired brain: “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Nearly thirty years ago, I put this verse to a tune to teach it to my children. As we focused on each word, I began to understand that complaints are against the Lord, and grumbling is a reaction to His plan. What I intended as a verse for my children, the Lord intended for me to live out. God loves me so much that He prepared me with a weapon sharper than a sword to fight the enemy of grumbling. A few days after committing the verse to memory, I walked out of a store and was hit on the head by a heavy piece of molding that fell from above the doorframe. When I gained consciousness, this verse was spinning in my brain. This reminder to give thanks in all things has become my lifeline to trusting God’s plan for me, as well as a blockade to my human tendency for bitterness and grumbling—then and now.

You have legitimate reasons to grumble too. Life is full of disappointments and challenges: hardships you never signed up for, dreams that failed to materialize, people you counted on who disappointed you, and much more. In our offices, churches, gyms, schools, neighborhoods, and homes, grumbling is epidemic, but gratitude is rare. Why can’t we join the grumbling gang with thoughts like My family doesn’t appreciate all I do for them, Why did she get the raise? or I’m always cleaning up his mess? Because when our response to everything is to display an “attitude of gratitude,” we demonstrate the difference our loving, sovereign God makes in our lives. Choosing to trust Him, when we haven’t a clue how our stories will end, affords us significant opportunities for influence as “lights” in our dark world. As we read in Philippians 2:14-15, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.”

My gratitude verse continues to impact me as I deal with the long-term effects of that injury from years ago. Recently I quoted it to my spinal neurologist while discussing my CT scan. He asked me to repeat the verse slowly so he could remember it.

People often ask my husband how he is doing with Parkinson’s disease, and he always replies, “Blessed.” Bob’s response enables him to focus on his countless blessings from the Lord, and it positively impacts the people he greets. One of those is our eleven-year-old grandson, Joe, who was sick for nearly two months while his family was on COVID-19 lockdown in the country where they serve as missionaries. In the midst of his pain and unable to leave his apartment for any reason, Joe was determined to be just like his grandpa and never grumble.

Shortly after I wrote this devotion, Joe and his family were in the last four seats on a plane to America. By God’s grace, he didn’t have a fever during their thirty-six-hour journey. Although Joe tested negative for COVID-19, he tested positive for parasites and other serious issues that came from living overseas. We are so thankful, though, that through an incredible series of God stories, Joe is now getting the medical help he needs. And he is still not grumbling!

Counting on God’s Word and the Holy Spirit who wrote it enables us to make the hard choice, time after time, to choose gratitude over grumbling.

REFLECTION

Memorize “my” verse to prevent grumbling (1 Thessalonians 5:18) or find your own. File it in your brain so you are ready to apply it at a moment’s notice. Halt the negative words before they form in your head and leave your lips. When the urge to grumble is overpowering, take a breath and choose gratitude instead.