“When our lives are shaped by gratitude, we’re more likely to notice the goodness and beauty in everyday things. We are content; we feel blessed and are eager to confer blessing…
Our capacity for gratitude is not connected with an abundance of resources but rather with a capacity to notice what it is that we do have…
Today it is often countercultural to take the posture of a grateful recipient. Some of us operate with a well-developed sense of entitlement, quite certain that we deserve good things and are entitled to the best that “life” has to offer. Others of us, because we work hard, are convinced that we have earned the good that has come to us…
If we think that we deserve the gifts and blessings we have received, it is easy for us to become greedy for more benefits and to overlook the needs of others.”
Christine Pohl in Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) 22-28.