"Consider the power of simple thanksgiving. Its genius is its prerequisite: humility, which is essential to a proper relationship to God. Paul asks, 'What do you have that you did not receive?' The answer is nada, nothing -- absolutely nothing whatsoever. Everything we have is a given, not a gotten. We enter the world naked, we exit the world naked. All we have in between is on loan. It's humiliating! Precisely. Then the apostle asks, 'And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?' (1 Cor. 4:7). In other words, what grounds do you have for pride? Same answer: nada, nothing -- absolutely nothing whatsoever. So 'gratitude is a species of justice,' writes Samuel Johnson, meaning that when we genuinely say thanks to God, we are seeing things as they actually are, and humbly giving credit where credit is due.
To be ungrateful is to see things as they are not, to have a perspective that is fundamentally and fatally distorted. Such is the view of the proud who see all that they have and are as a gotten, not a given."
Patterson, Ben. Deepening Your Conversation With God: The Life-Changing Power of Prayer. The Pastor's Soul Series. Ed. David L. Goetz. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1999. pp. 88-89.
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