It Is Good to Give Thanks

The psalmist states something simple and profound: It is good to give thanks to the Lord. Giving thanks is good, good in itself, and good for us. It is the right and fitting response of a creature to the Creator, of the blessed to the Blesser; there is a rightness to gratitude, an order restored, when we give thanks to the One to whom all thanks is due. But it is also good for us, for gratitude does the grateful heart good, lifting it, healing it, reorienting it toward joy. To give thanks is not only our duty; it is our health.

This is worth pausing over, because we often think of thanksgiving as something we owe God, a debt to be paid, perhaps even a burden. But the psalmist frames it as a good, a delight, a benefit, a blessing to the one who practises it. The grateful person is the happier, healthier, more contented person; gratitude is its own reward. God does not command thanksgiving because He is needy for our praise, but because giving thanks is good for us, putting our hearts right and filling them with the joy that gratitude brings. To give thanks is to do the good thing, and to be the better for it.

Give thanks today not as a grudging duty but as a good gift to yourself as well as to God. It is good to give thanks, so do the good thing, and be glad in it.