students of jesus

Thank You for what You’ve done,

Thank You for what You’re doing,

Thank You for what You will do.

This simple prayer is taking root in me, teaching me the deep wisdom of gratitude, and changing my life.

Each morning, after the alarm goes off—but before my feet swing out of bed and stand me up—I take just ten minutes to pray and think through this prayer. Ten minutes well spent: better than the snooze button; better than a to-do list. James Bryan Smith observed that, upon waking, most believers turn their mind immediately to what must be done in the new day. He suggested starting each day with a meditation on the goodness of God. This prayer grew from his sound counsel.

Let me share what I’ve learned after a few months of this discipline:

Daily gratitude isn’t easy: it’s a life-skill we must learn. Anyone can recite the major blessings of their life if they are called upon to do so every once in a while. But the daily practice of thankfulness either becomes dull via repetition or a mere formula we rush through before we move on to the next task. Unless we apply ourselves to the substance of the prayer: can we develop the skill to discover God’s goodness day-by-day? My ten-minute morning prayer exercise has begun to sharpen my awareness of God’s mercies, which after all, are new every morning. As I go about my day I try to gather up in my memory the Father’s small kindnesses—and I’ve discovered there are hundreds each day! But we only find those things we are looking for.

His goodness is not random; it’s the current of his presence. This simple prayer urges me to connect yesterday with today, and to anticipate God’s works tomorrow, before they have even happened. Have you ever played this game: “What did I have for lunch yesterday?” In many cases it’s hard to recall. So it is with the thousand kindnesses we are shown each day. But our memories can be trained to reach backward 24 hours and savor the fragrance of small graces we consumed yesterday. The yesterday portion of this prayer exercise primes the pump of gratitude for the new day: we know our schedule, and we know our tasks; what we somehow fail to know is that God’s goodness is infused in these daily activities. When we thank him for what he is doing today we are reminded not only that he is good, but also that he is with us. We begin to realize with the Psalmist, “as for me, the nearness of God is my good.” (73:28)

Finally, we can experience breakthrough for what is yet to come. Too often we imprison gratitude in the past. The long-term effect of this choice is the subtle idea that his goodness is behind us and the only thing ahead is worry. Anxiety is nearly always pointed toward the future—why not replace it with thankfulness for what God is going to do? In my personal experience I have found this to be a remarkable antidote to fear. When I’ve remembered his goodness in the past, and seen his goodness today, it’s but a small step to realize that his faithfulness extends forward, forever.

But this prayer is an exercise. At first it seems forced or clumsy, or perhaps even lame. Intellectual agreement (for instance, by merely reading a blog post) is not enough: we enter into a lifestyle of gratitude through intentionality and practice. You will, no doubt, adapt the three prayer steps to your own situation. But after a few weeks of trial and error, you will discover a new spring of life—and I am thankful for what he will do in you!

Grace to you all, and peace!

Jesus said some pretty outrageous things; sometimes you just have to wonder if he was serious. Maybe when we see him face-to-face he might say, “Oh, the Sermon the Mount? I was just yanking your chain.” Or not. Perhaps he meant what he said.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

These words are a crazy combination of challenge and promise. The promise is perhaps a negative: each day comes with just enough trouble. It’s not the sort of promise you’ll find in a book of Bible promises or some promise-a-day software. The challenge is that Jesus suggests tomorrow isn’t worth the worry. Really? How, then, can I prepare?

These words from Jesus are an invitation to exercise the discipline of the present moment.

Each of us lives one day at a time. Rich or poor, young or old, we all experience time in a sequence of days. We cannot jump ahead by a day or a year. We cannot recreate the past, as in the movie “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray, a self-centered fool, is given the opportunity to live the same day over (and over and over) until he gets it right. No: the days march by in line, one after another.

Who came up with such an arrangement? Well, God did. Although he lives outside of time, he set the cosmos in motion, and in so doing, set us into a world of time. “So what?” we are tempted to think--until we consider that God looked upon all of his creation and said, "It’s good. It’s very good.” The goodness of creation reveals that the daily march of our lives, the day-upon-day progression of life, was set up by a wise and loving Father. He created time for our good. He created the daily, but we have added the grind.

Still, many of us feel trapped in the present moment. Our past has hemmed us in: we think our foolish choices have brought us this far and the present moment feels like prison. Others look forward from this present day and conclude the path of our lives is already set. Forces are in motion, we think. The future has been determined by past events.  We begin to think our own lives are beyond control.

We’re not alone in these thoughts. Some of the greatest men of faith had remarkably bad days. Days in which they felt captured by the past or faced an uncertain future. Moses must have been having a really bad day when he began to pray the prayer in Psalm 90. Moses observed that God lives forever, and we are lucky to hit eighty years. Everything dies. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) Moses must’ve been a real buzz kill at parties.

Then the Spirit of God hinted at what Jesus would teach years later: “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:14) Moses began to get the message. The final verses of this Psalm/prayer begin to look up. God’s mercies are not yesterday’s mercies, nor are they a pipe dream for tomorrow. They're here now. In the present moment. There are new mercies for each new morning.

I like to imagine Jesus reciting Psalm 90 while he walked in the Galilean countryside. I can see him watching plants putting forth flowers, birds finding food, feeling the breeze on his cheek. Jesus smiled: perhaps he wondered what Moses was getting so worked up about. Jesus launched a message about today. Today, he said, the Kingdom of Heaven is breaking in. Maybe it didn’t yesterday, who knows what will happen tomorrow, but the Spirit is bringing the righteousness, joy and peace of the Kingdom right now to those who hear and rejoice.

His words are a call to practice the discipline of the present moment. Jesus is not against the past: he encourages us to remember the past, but only so we can have confidence that God is with us today. What he did for others in the past he will do for us. He’s not against the future. Dave Ramsey can relax: I’m sure Jesus had a 401K-retirement account. But he wasn’t invested in the future; his investment was all in the now. It’s common sense to learn from the past; it’s dangerous to live there. It’s prudent to plan for the future; it will drive you crazy to try to control it.

So we’re left with the wisest, most radical, sanest advice ever given:

“Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”