Grace and Gratitude

It’s that time of the year again-the sea­son of hol­i­day gath­er­ings with all their joys and tribulations. 

One of my favorite hol­i­days has always been Thanksgiving, a once cel­e­brat­ed day in its own right, which has now become the post-Halloween hol­i­day and gate­way to Black Friday gift and bar­gain shop­ping mad­ness. But always dur­ing this sea­son, my mind focus­es on the word gratitude. 

An online def­i­n­i­tion for the word grat­i­tude is “the qual­i­ty of being thank­ful, readi­ness to show appre­ci­a­tion for and to return kindness.”

This def­i­n­i­tion struck a chord with me.  While I have asso­ci­at­ed grat­i­tude with thoughts and feel­ings of appre­ci­a­tion, return­ing kind­ness requires action.  Which brought me to pon­der the inter­sec­tion of grat­i­tude and grace.  I found a short def­i­n­i­tion of the word grace as “cour­te­ous goodwill.”

When we gath­er with fam­i­ly and friends, there is inevitably some­one who annoys us.  There is Uncle Joe, who pon­tif­i­cates on his polit­i­cal and reli­gious views (which dif­fer from our own), and Aunt Linda, always ask­ing about our rela­tion­ship sta­tus and employ­ment choic­es. Cousin Cindy can­not let a hol­i­day pass with­out com­men­tary about our weight, hair, or cloth­ing.  And there is some­body rant­i­ng about this world/young people/our coun­try going to hell. 

You get the pic­ture. And there is the chance, God for­bid, that we might hap­pen to be the annoy­ing rel­a­tive.

How dif­fer­ent may the sea­son be if we can prac­tice cour­te­ous good­will toward every­one, includ­ing the grouchy sales clerk, the fran­tic serv­er, and the tech sup­port per­son? If we show a will­ing­ness to act with appre­ci­a­tion and kind­ness, maybe we could have less stress and more joy. 

I think I will try.

Goodwill and peace to you this hol­i­day season.