Paul urged believers to "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Gratitude is not just good manners; it is a way of seeing the world.
These six stories about gratitude and contentment, retold in our own words, include a grandmother's rule against complaining, a year of grateful photographs, a parable about a thief, an awkward phone call, a father's letter and an airport farewell. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection.
Stories in this collection:
- "Don't Complain": Maya Angelou's Grandmother
- 365 Grateful: A Year of Thankful Photographs
- The Contentment Thief
- Thanking Dad
- A Letter From a Father Who Had Already Died
- "I Wish You Enough"
"Don't Complain": Maya Angelou's Grandmother
The poet and author Maya Angelou had a deeply troubled childhood. But from the age of three she spent several years living with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, and that time gave her a rare sense of calm and stability.
Her grandmother ran a general store. One thing that really annoyed her was people complaining. Customers would grumble about the heat, the cold and all kinds of other things she considered trivial.
Whenever that happened, Angelou recalled, her grandmother would wait until the complaining customer had left the shop. Then she would call young Maya over to her.
Had she heard what that person had been complaining about? her grandmother would ask. All over the world, she said, people had gone to sleep the night before, poor and rich, Black and white, and they would never wake up again. Those people would give anything at all for just five minutes of the weather that customer had been grumbling about.
So, she told Maya, be careful about complaining. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.
Angelou carried that lesson with her for the rest of her life. Gratitude, her grandmother taught her, begins with remembering that every ordinary day is a gift that others would long to have.
Takeaway: Every ordinary day is a gift that someone else would give anything to have. Gratitude starts when we stop grumbling about it.
Source: Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), as retold in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
365 Grateful: A Year of Thankful Photographs
In 2008 Hailey Bartholomew, a young Australian woman, found that she was not enjoying life. She described herself as feeling lost, stuck on a treadmill.
She could hardly explain it. She was married to a man she loved, and she had beautiful children who held her heart. So why did she feel so low about her life?
Hailey sought advice from a nun, who suggested that she spend time each day reflecting on something she was grateful for.
So Hailey began a project she called 365grateful. Every day for a year, she took a photograph of something she was thankful for.
It changed her life, because it helped her to see things she had never noticed before.
She had always thought of her husband as unromantic. One evening she took a photo of him serving up dinner, the thing she was grateful for that day. Looking at it, she noticed for the first time that he had put the biggest piece of pie on her plate. Then she realised that he always did. It was a small but profound way he had been showing his love for her all along, and she had never seen it.
She had found being a mother a boring job. But as she photographed her children reaching out their hands to her, playing and exploring, she discovered how much joy and wonder there was in her everyday world.
Through the simple practice of gratitude, Hailey found herself lifted out of her rut and celebrating life again. Her project later inspired many others to try the same thing.
Takeaway: Gratitude is a habit we can practise. When we deliberately look for God's gifts, we start to notice blessings that were there all along.
Source: Hailey Bartholomew, 365grateful project and TEDx talk.
The Contentment Thief
A parable by Scott Higgins; we retell it in our own words.
Once upon a time there was a round little man with dark, brooding eyes who was obsessed with collecting clocks.
The world is full of clocks: grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks, cuckoo clocks and alarm clocks, digital clocks and clocks with hands, big clocks, little clocks and clocks in between. And this little man wanted to collect as many as he possibly could. By day he thought about clocks, and by night he dreamed about them. He visited antique dealers to buy old clocks, searched department stores for the latest clocks and hunted through garage sales for clocks other people no longer wanted.
Soon he had so many clocks that he had to build a warehouse to hold them. And every time he found a new one, the routine was the same. He would hold it, feel its shape and listen to its tick. Then he would drive it to his warehouse, undo the heavy padlock on the barbed-wire gate, check that no one was watching, unlock the doors, hurry inside, shut the door behind him and carefully put his latest treasure in its place.
Yet every visit to the warehouse troubled him. Each time he opened and closed the doors, it was as though someone was whispering in his ear. Someone in Sweden has more clocks than you. Someone in London has rarer clocks than you. If only you had one more clock, then you would be happy.
Sometimes the whispers were more sinister. Is your warehouse really secure? People might steal your clocks. At other times they were resentful. Why should other people get help buying clocks when you don't?
Whenever the whispering started, he was sure he could see someone out of the corner of his eye. But whenever he turned to look, there was no one there.
One day he arrived at the warehouse with his latest prize, and to his relief there was no whispering at all. But his good mood vanished the moment he opened the door. Someone was inside: a tall, wiry fellow with mischievous eyes, holding the most exquisite antique cuckoo clock the collector had ever seen.
Who are you? demanded the collector.
Why, I'm a thief, said the stranger. He placed the clock gently on a shelf and gave it a quick dust. Oh, don't worry, it isn't stolen. It's mine, and it's a gift for you.
As he spoke, his voice sounded strangely familiar. Then the collector realised: it was the voice of the whisperer, the voice he heard every time he unlocked his warehouse.
A thief? cried the collector. But a thief would take clocks from my collection, not add to it! What sort of thief are you?
Oh, I haven't come to steal your clocks, said the stranger. You know my voice, don't you? You've heard me many times. And he leaned in close and whispered all the old words again: someone has more clocks, someone has rarer clocks, if only you had one more, is your warehouse safe?
I've been here every time you've come, he said. I haven't come to steal your clocks, my friend. I've come to steal your contentment.
Who, or what, is the contentment thief in our lives today?
Takeaway: Paul learned "the secret of being content in any and every situation" (Philippians 4:12). The thief of contentment rarely takes our things; he makes us blind to what we already have.
Source: Parable by Scott Higgins.
Thanking Dad
The poet Robert Bly told a story, later retold by the Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph, about a man in his mid-thirties who had been away at a men's weekend.
While he was there, he realised that he had never once told his father that he loved him. So he decided that as soon as he got home, he would do it.
He got home, picked up the phone and called his parents. His dad answered.
Hi, Dad, it's me.
Oh, er, hi, son! I'll go and get your mother.
No, don't get Mum, said the son. It's you I want to talk to.
There was a pause. Then his father asked, Why? Do you need money?
No, Dad, said the son. It's just that I've been thinking a lot about you, and about all the things you did for me: working all those years to put me through college, supporting all of us. My life is going well now, and it's because of what you did to get me started. I realised I had never really said thank you.
Silence on the other end of the line. The son went on: I want to say thank you, and that I love you.
There was a long silence. Then his father asked, "Son, have you been drinking?"
It is funny, and a little sad. For many of us, saying thank you to the people closest to us feels strangely difficult, and it can catch them by surprise.
Takeaway: Some of us are so unused to giving thanks that it sounds strange when we do. Don't wait for a special occasion to tell people what they mean to you.
Source: Steve Biddulph, Manhood, retelling a story by Robert Bly.
A Letter From a Father Who Had Already Died
Paul Brand became a world-renowned surgeon whose pioneering work transformed the treatment of leprosy. He received many honours, including being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and techniques he developed in hand surgery are still used today. He died in 2003.
Brand grew up in the hills of southern India, where his parents were missionaries. At the age of nine he was sent to school in England.
Five years later, when he was fourteen, a telegram arrived telling him that his beloved father, Jesse, had died of blackwater fever. Paul had fond memories of his father, a man with a great love for people and a deep delight in the natural world.
Some time after the telegram, Paul received a letter from his father. It had been posted before his death, but it had taken weeks to arrive by sea.
Its words made a deep impression on the grieving boy. His father described the hills around their home in India, and then encouraged his son to enjoy the natural world. He wrote that "God means us to delight in his world." You did not need to be an expert in botany or zoology to enjoy nature, he said. Just observe, remember and compare.
And, his father urged, always look to God with thankfulness and worship for placing you in such a delightful corner of the universe as planet Earth.
Paul Brand carried that sense of wonder and gratitude throughout his life and his long career, marvelling at the design of the human body that he spent his life repairing.
Takeaway: Gratitude is a lens for seeing all of life as God's gift. Every hillside and every sunrise is an invitation to give thanks.
Source: Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001).
"I Wish You Enough"
Retold from a story by the American writer Bob Perks.
Bob Perks wrote that he was once sitting in an airport when he overheard a father and his adult daughter in their last moments together. Her flight had been called, and standing near the security gate, they hugged.
The father told his daughter that he loved her and that he wished her enough. She replied that their life together had been more than enough, and that his love was all she had ever needed. And she wished him enough too.
They kissed, and she left. The father walked over to the window where Perks was sitting. Perks could see that he needed to cry. He tried not to intrude, but the man spoke to him. Had he ever said goodbye to someone, he asked, knowing it would be for ever?
Perks said that he had. He remembered telling his own father, near the end of his life, how much he meant to him.
He asked the man, gently, why this goodbye was for ever. I am old, the man replied, and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead, and the reality is that her next trip back will be for my funeral.
Perks asked what he had meant when he said, I wish you enough.
The old man began to smile. It was a wish handed down through the generations, he explained. His parents used to say it to everyone. It meant wishing someone a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.
Then, as if reciting it from memory, he explained more. To wish someone enough, he said, was to wish them enough sunshine to keep their attitude bright, and enough rain to make them appreciate the sun. Enough happiness to keep their spirit alive, and enough pain that the smallest joys would seem bigger. Enough gain to satisfy them, and enough loss to help them treasure what they had. And enough hellos to carry them through the final goodbye.
Then he began to cry, and walked away.
Takeaway: Contentment is not having everything; it is having enough and knowing it. "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6).
Source: Bob Perks, "I Wish You Enough".
Final thoughts
A grandmother's rule, a year of photographs, a contentment thief, an awkward phone call, a father's letter and an airport blessing. Each invites us to notice what we have and to say thank you.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and asks what makes a good life.
What could you photograph today as a sign of God's goodness?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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