I am over-aware that gratitude is a good idea. I’ve read books, heard the research, and mentored others toward gratitude, but I cannot find my own way to it. This leaves me feeling guilty and incompetent. But when I come out of shame, sometimes I see underlying issues feeding my tendency to be a pessimist, a cynic, a realist. One of these issues is survivor guilt. Every person alive today is susceptible to survivor guilt—a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident in which others died.¹ Our world is an incident in which others die. When I consider my life in comparison to most of the world population, saying I’m grateful somehow comes off as superior. Survival guilt leaves me just shy of getting the words “thank you” out of my mouth.

One morning I ponder this while watching birds out my window—hopping on the neighbor’s roof, sitting on telephone wires, strutting in the street, always fluttering here and there. And God whispers, everyone has the birds.

So then I suppose most everyone has sunrises and sunsets, trees and berry bushes, flowers, animals, stars. Even friendship, love, and the miracle of life. The lines of “lucky” and “unlucky” are not drawn between first-world and third-world countries. In all parts of the world we find sex slaves and starvation, abuse and death. There are Americans in solitary confinement, shut off from most blessings, and Americans confined by busyness, who for years haven’t stopped long enough to see a bird or a sunset. Loss or lack of freedom occurs on so many levels in so many places.

I know a subversive God, who “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) Not only that, “When He died, He died once to break the power of sin for all.” (Romans 6:10, emphasis added)

If God is not selectively blessing and saving people, I wonder why the world looks like it does. Could it be that starvation, loneliness, and slavery are human constructs? If they are constructed by humans, can they be deconstructed by humans? Perhaps I have an incredible opportunity to participate in their reversal. If these tragedies—which distort or destroy the good things God has provided—came at the hands of broken humans, then as a healing human I may participate in restoration.

So where does this leave me?

There are no easy answers.

It seems that God provides for all. My greatest gifts are gifts God has given to everyone, not just to me or those like me. I may feel gratitude in the sacred moments when I notice the sky, see a friend’s deepest heart, or awake to the sound of singing birds, knowing that these pleasures are gifts to all.

At the same time, I may grieve for those who do not experience these blessings, who are locked away physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually—which is all of us, some of the time; and some of us, all the time. For this I cry, and so does God—God whose dream for us is a life characterized by love, friendship, and beauty.

This corporate sense of gratitude and grief gently moves me from cynicism to awe. I am in awe both at the beauty and the pain of the world. I am called to work for the good of the just and the unjust. I am invited to stare in wonder at the sun setting, and stare in wonder at a starving child, and allow both to wreck me. And for this I am grateful.

Endnotes:
¹New Oxford American Dictionary