Gratitude in the Dark

Jason Shirk

Thanksgiving • Sermon • Submitted 7 months ago • Presented 7 months ago

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Introduction

Holidays are not always the best days for some people. Maybe family has moved on, they are lonely. Maybe the holidays highlight family tensions that they wish weren’t there or they remind us of situations in the past. A holiday asking us to be thankful when we are hurting seems to be too much to ask. It feels like asking a man who just had his leg shot off in a battle to sing Yankee Doodle.

Our society doesn’t find gratitude natural in the good times, but it becomes even harder to find that gratitude in our hearts in the hard times. And yet, there is something cathartic or healing in gratitude that we often miss.

Isn’t it crazy how sometimes the things that are best for us are the things we don’t like at all. Take for example, green vegetables. Many of us don’t relish vegetables and yet they are full of the vitamins and nutrients we would need. You ever notice that even vegans and vegetarians go out of their way to make things that taste like meat. We often do not crave what is good. Even our medicine sometimes can be like this. You ever get one of those big horse pills that are hard to swallow. We put off taking them as long as we can.

Gratitude is one of those things that doesn’t always come easy when we feel like we are hurting or displeased with life. Its the last thing on our mind. And yeah, it feels wrong to make the wounded soldier sing Yankee Doodle, but their might just be a reason to do it. It might get his mind off of the wound. It might lift his spirits for even a moment. It might give him hope to keep on pushing forward. It might get him to listen to the doctor who is trying to bandage him up.

This morning I want to meditate on this thought: Gratitude in the Dark. This Psalm is a lament of death vs 15 even though the first verse doesn’t seem to start off that way. Obviously the author had not experienced death yet or he wouldn’t be writing these words. He wrote them as he walked in the valley of the shadow of death. Verse 3 says the bitter pain and sorrows that accompanied his life were as strong as death and threatened to overwhelm him. It is this valley that gratitude does not come naturally.

The force of death in this Psalm is even made more poignant when we realize that this Psalm was sung by Jesus and his disciples at their last supper right before going to the garden to be betrayed and then hung on a cross to die. Matt 26:30 “And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.” This Psalm is one of the Paschal Hallel sung at Passover which Jesus and his disciples were celebrating.

G. Campbell Morgan commented on this Psalm:

What ever the local circumstances which gave rise to this song, it is evident that all its rich meaning was fulfilled, when in the midst of that little company of perplexed souls, the shadows of the one death already on him, Jesus sang this song of prophetic triumph over the sharpness of the hour of passion to which he was passing. He has made it over to all His own as their triumph song over death.

How does an psalmist who in the sorrows of death and the grips of hell respond with words like, “I love the Lord...”Really the question is:

How does gratitude change things when we are in our darkest moments?

The Basis of Gratitude vs 1,2

Verses one and two seem to be quite upbeat for a psalm about death, but the psalmist does not seem to be able to contain himself as he sees this truth. But I think it is important to notice that the basis of his gratitude is past grace. The Psalmist loves and praises the lord because of the things that he has done for him in the past. In fact this Psalm is being used to celebrate the passover was a remembrance of what God had done in the past to bring Israel out of Egypt.

Why he loves the Lord?

The Psalmist tells us why he loves the Lord so much. Because he hath heard my voice and Because he inclined his ear unto me. When he prayed, God listened to him. God had heard his voice (I love that phrase there because it shows that prayer was often done out loud, if you haven’t tried doing your devotional prayer out loud, I highly recommend it.) But God had listened to him and the implication is that God had done something about it. But let me ask you a question, When did God do this? The verb tense is in Hebrew actually includes the idea of continual past action.

He shouts out with Joy because he is thinking back over all the past times that God has been good to Him. How often do we forget all those blessings from the past? The basis of his praise and gratitude is all of God’s past blessings in His life.

Earlier I used the phrase past grace. I did that for a reason because it highlights how God’s blessings in our lives are free gifts from Him. He was under no obligation to give grace, but He loved us and showed grace. Past grace can be:

God’s provision when we didn’t think it possible

God’s protection from harm

God’s blessings in our lives like family and friends

God’s past work in our lives to save us

God’s past and present work to change us

The basis of our gratitude is always going to be what God has done in the past. I would highly recommend keeping track of those in written form somewhere because in your darkest moments, you won’t remember then on your own.

The Struggle of Gratitude vs 3-11

As I indicated in the introduction, gratitude is not always easy. Reading the first two verses, you might be surprised to find that this psalm is a lament psalm. For those of you who haven’t heard me preach on Lament, I’ll give a brief definition:

Mark Vroegop in his book Dark Cloud, Deep Mercy where he defines it as the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness. Lament is the struggle to work through our grief and pain in light of the goodness of God.

Four elements of Lament:

Pouring out our complaint to God openly and honestly- vs 3 Gratitude becomes hard because we don’t always feel like being grateful. We don’t always feel like singing. We don’t always feel like praising God because life hurts. The psalmist here is honest about how he felt. It was like the sorrows of death and felt like the pains of hell. I don’t know if you have ever meditated on what hell will feel like for the lost, but that is the picture he is painting. He expresses his irrational anger toward people in vs 11. He lashes out in his grief and haste and concludes that all men are liars. Sound a lot like the cries of women who have been hurt by men. He is not hiding anything from God because God knows exactly how he feels. He concludes that he found sorrow and trouble. What he expected from life was good, but what he found to be the case was trouble and sorrow. Grief and pain.

Asking God to intervene- vs 4 reveals that it is in this moment that he asks God to intervene. The asking and the seeking often go together, but the Psalmist turns to the right place when he was struggling with grief. Why is it that when we are hurting we often become more closed off? We don’t go to those who can help us. People will fail us but God is the one we need to go to. Don’t leave people out of your life, but if you can’t do anything else go to God.

Seeking God

Choosing to Trust in God- but this is where Lament is different than grief classes and secular counseling. Lament pushes your forward in faith. Faith is trusting in God even when you can’t see the answer in front of you. In the dark, you don’t know how this will ever end or what the end will be like. But faith, reminds you that God is worth trusting. The Psalmist affirms his belief (faith) in God when he says in vs 5 Gracious is the Lord and righteous yea our God is merciful. You could some all of this up with God is good. God is so good, He is kind to us and gives us grace in our worst times. God is so good that He does what is right and God is so good that even when we mess up, He shows mercy.

I may not see how this is all going to work out, but I can look back at every thing God has done in the past. I can see how He has been good in the past, I can see how he has shown mercy, I can see how he made things right. If God can be trusted with my past then I should be able to trust Him with my future. You see how gratitude ties into this whole process of Lament and how gratitude pushes us out of the dark. It begins to bring healing, strength and light in our darkness.

You can choose to sit there and wallow, but you will never get out that way. I am reminded of the story of Pilgrim’s progress:

Christian and Hopeful were both caught sleeping on Giant Despair’s land. As they slept, the giant catches them and throws them into the Dungeon of Despair. They lay there knowing it was their own fault that they were in this position because they had not listened to the advice they were giving. They lay there from Wednesday to Saturday without any bread, drink or light. While lying there Christian says to Hopeful:

Brother," said CHRISTIAN, "what shall we do? the life that we now live is miserable: for my part I know not whether is best--to live thus, or to die out of hand. 'My soul chooses strangling rather than life'

They try to overcome the giant and are beaten down. After some time Christian comes to his senses and remembers that he has a key called Promise which will unlock any lock.

We often struggle with gratitude as we sit in our dungeon of despair, but we forget that we have the key to getting out of that dungeon available to us at any moment if we would just use it.

The Expression of Gratitude vs 12-19

But the power of gratitude isn’t that it reminds us of past blessings and helps us work through our grief. Gratitude pushes us to ask God for more future grace. This really is the key of the text. In verses 12-14, the Psalmist wants to expresses his gratitude to God for all the past blessings, but how does he show his gratitude? He asks for more blessings. He asks for Future grace in his life.

Vs 12 what can I give to God for all his blessings?

Vs 13 I will take the cup of salvation- The psalmist is saying I am going to take all the satisfying blessings that you have given me and I will enjoy them. And then he goes on to ask for more- and call upon the name of the Lord. You could add the word again after this and you would be getting the meaning here. He is in essence saying, “Lord you have blessed me with so many blessings in life. I am going to enjoy and delight in those good things and continue to ask for more.”

Seems a little greedy right. Not really because God is glorified in us when we find our delight and satisfaction in Him.

God may have done some great things for you in your past, but continue to reach forward for some more things. God may have done a great work teaching you so many lessons in the past, but He has more for your to learn. God may have used you in the past to do some things, but God is not done with you now.

Conclusion

So this is really what I want to encourage you with this morning: Gratitude has a healing effect on us when we are struggling in our darkest moments and it can actually bring us out of the dark and into the light. It is in those moments that we need to drink deeply of God’s grace and ask for more.

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