Ask God for a thankful heart and the grace to give thanks in ALL things.

[G]ive thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thess. 5:18)

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One of the most memorable lines in the 1991 Bill Murray comedy “What about Bob?” was spoken by child actor Charlie Korsmo.

As his frustrated father, an insufferably egotistic shrink played by Richard Dreyfuss, fails to get the kid, Siggy, to dive off a lakeside dock, the boy lurches away, blurting out, “With all the horror in the world, what difference does it make?”

What, indeed?  If you consume a steady diet of news, the world looks pretty bad on almost any level.  What real difference could any of us make?  That’s the nature of news; it’s an ever-turning carousel of human foibles, tragedy, the bizarre and occasionally the benign but interesting tidbit.  Plus sports.

I am a voracious news consumer, and have never been a glass-half-full kind of guy.  More the other kind.    But I’ve found over the years that the folks who mostly look for the good instead of the bad are nicer to be around and have a secret power: gratitude….

Many of the world’s great thinkers over the centuries have celebrated the rewards of being grateful.

“He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt,” wrote the Roman statesman and dramatist Seneca the Younger (4 BC –AD 65).  All of his plays were tragedies and he was forced by the evil emperor Nero to commit suicide.  But, he penned a lot of wonderful lines before being done in, including “all art is but imitation of nature,” which to this day must drive the abstract impressionists crazy….

Given that we’re on the threshold of spring, it’s a good time to celebrate the rebirth of life, along with something greater, as did the English poet Thomas Gray in his Ode for Music (1769):

Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,

The bee’s collected treasures sweet,

Sweet music’s melting fall, but sweeter yet

The still small voice of gratitude.

Getting back to Siggy (who did learn to dive) and his question in “What About Bob?” an attitude of gratitude makes a lot of difference to ourselves and to those around us.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 4: 8:  “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

That’s good medicine no matter who’s in the Oval Office, what Nancy Pelosi is doing, or how our day is going. (Excerpts from Robert Knight’s article in townhall.com)