Prayer of petition comes natural enough to every earnest soul. But should we never pray except to ask? Jesus turns again to the blackboard and writes the word: Thanksgiving. Yes, this is a form of prayer to be employed very frequently, far oftener than I have, perhaps, realized, preoccupied as I am with my many needs.
Thanksgiving _ how helpless and hopeless I feel at once when I begin to think how to discharge my debt of thanks to God! He chose me before the foundations of the world that I should one day receive this inestimable gift of life, and from one second to the next His everlasting arms support me. There are blessings, spiritual and material, heaped upon me by this loving Father. I have thought of them before; I may well recall them once more and let my heart go out in acts of gratitude.
Thanksgiving for so many benefits of which I am entirely unconscious; which I shall recognize only when I meet Him in heaven. Suppose a little child is playing with a toy on the roadside. The tiny mind can attend to one thing only at a time, and all thought is fixed just now on the toy and how to play with it. But, as you walk on the path, you see a car approaching, driven by a drunken man, on the wrong side of the road, and heading direct for the spot where the child is playing. You look and gauge the distance, and, at the risk of your life, you leap forward and snatch the child, just in time, from the teeth of danger. Perhaps the child is indignant, perhaps it cries out that its beautiful toy is crushed into pulp by the car. But you brush such childish remonstrances aside as you give the child back safe into its mother's grateful arms.
Many of us are like that child. We cry out against our circumstances. We complain that things have not worked out according to our plans, that we have lost a good job, that someone unworthy has been promoted and we passed over. One day we shall see the explanation of all. We shall recognize that every single trial or disappointment has one reason, and only one: it was love of the heavenly Father that ordered and permitted all. "Wit it well, love was His meaning."
Meantime, in my prayer of gratitude, let me include thanks for the things I find hard and cannot understand. He knows; He sees; He plans, and it is a wonderful tribute to the love we bear Him when we thank Him for our failures, our sorrows, our mistakes, and what we imagine, in our foolishness, to be His mistakes!
Jesus cleansed ten lepers and was pained when only one remembered to come back and thank Him. Jesus sat over Jerusalem and wept because the ungrateful city did not know the time of its visitation. Has He cleansed me too of the leprosy of sin in the sacrament of His mercy? Has there been many a day of visitation when He came to me in Holy Communion?
Thanksgiving? Lord, I am hopelessly in debt. "Quid retribuam?" How can I best attempt to try to pay What I owe? Surely by using Your gifts for the spread of Your kingdom, the kingdom of grace, in souls. I pray: "Thy kingdom come!" But You deign to make that coming contingent on my cooperation, on the use I make of Your gifts to me. It is a privilege, Lord, but a big responsibility too. It is the thanksgiving You expect. "Ephpheta!" Not only with my lips must I thank You, but with all I have and am and ever may become.