I was surely the least well-off person in the room at the Thanksgiving Day service. Churchgoers from the well-to-do neighborhood I was visiting gave thanks for things my 20-something self just didn’t have: homes of their own, marriages, careers. Yet I, too, was awash with gratitude. Through prayer, I’d trusted God to meet my need for a way to get to the US to be best man at my friend’s wedding, and in the States I’d trusted God to reveal necessary means to get me back to the UK. Both trusts had been realized in cash gifts from very unexpected sources who knew nothing of my particular needs.
So, lack blossomed into reasons to be grateful: my immediate financial need was met; the wedding was a joy; and I felt a profound sense of the reality and practicality of God’s care.
I also saw, as a hymn puts it, that gratitude itself is wealth:
