Thankfulness

Grace, Gratitude and Goodness

Gratitude has become popular these days. Psychology has caught up to biblical theology in understanding that a grateful disposition is connected to a healthy mind. What becomes strange to me is the fact that, without Christ, we don't have a direction for our gratitude. 

It is a wonderful thing that we can be thankful that we have another day of life, or that we get to work with children (what a privilege!) or that we have food in our refrigerators. But we miss out on deeper joy if we don't know to whom we can be grateful. There is a Person who has given these things to us. Getting to the Person--namely, Jesus--allows us to get to the praise, producing deep joy.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm 100:4

I often like to tell the children in my care that I am thankful for them, that they are in my class and that I get the chance to see them. This reiterates the reality that they have value. The hope is that they translate this value into participating in the classroom community. This participation can look like lots of things, but particularly valuing others. 

What we show is what we teach

In another post, I'll be talking about the beauty and cultivation of Language and how the Montessori philosophy handles this phenomenon. As an addendum, it's important to consider how much children listen to us when we speak. They pick up vocabulary, cultural vernacular, AND tone of voice. If they hear adults complaining around them, I imagine that complaining would become normalized in the way they communicate. Would it not also be true the other way around? What words and actions will we bring to the child while they are in the stage of the Absorbent Mind (or any stage of their development for that matter?) We cannot force them into having grateful hearts. We can only make gratitude a well paved path through many opportunities of showing it, thus making said path easier to find and easier still to journey on their own.