Hello and welcome to our CCEF podcast, Where Life and Scripture Meet. My name is Gunner Gundersen. I'm here with Esther Liu and Darby Strickland, my colleagues at CCEF. And we're thrilled that you've joined us today and really excited about I think what'll be a very enjoyable topic and a fruitful topic.

Before we start though, I just want to first highlight our annual CCEF National Conference, which is coming up Friday through Sunday, October 3–5, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It is that Hershey, Pennsylvania, the one with the chocolate. And our theme for the national conference this year is To Live Is Christ: The Life & Ministry of the Apostle Paul. And we would really love to see you there, whether in person or online. And just wanted you to know that as a public service announcement, there will be a price increase on August the 4th. So please get registered soon if you're planning to attend. And we're hopeful that this maybe pushes some of you over the edge to get registered and come join us. We do already have 1,700 in-person attendees who are registered, another 400 virtual attendees. And we're really looking forward to seeing so many friends, both old and new, as the leaves start to turn in early October in Pennsylvania. So if you want to learn more and register, please visit ccef.org/2025. That's ccef.org/2025.

Our topic today is cultivating gratitude. Cultivating gratitude. I think we can safely say that as believers, we all know that gratitude is a fundamentally good thing, and we're often called to it in Scripture. We think about it often around a holiday like Thanksgiving and on other special occasions. But we would just love to take some time here and just reflect together, kind of have a group meditation on gratitude and delve deeper into this.

And so I just want to start off with just the practical question of how can we foster gratitude, before we get into some thoughts about how it's beneficial and how we might foster it in different situations. But how overall can we foster gratitude? What might be some of the things that you all have learned about fostering gratitude or practices that you might have, things that you have found or heard to be helpful?

I love that you're asking that, Gunner, because so much of parenting I've recognized is fostering, wanting to foster gratitude in my children. And my husband just has done it really sweetly with our children, I think well before I even realized what he was doing. He was always encouraging them to thank me, whether it was after every meal I prepared them, he'd say, now, thank your mommy, you know, as soon as they could talk to just anything, any way that I was serving them, he actually encouraged them to be thankful. And he is just a person that walks around the house thanking all of us for all our contributions. And so our family just has this culture of gratitude. And I would say it's just a sweet recognition that somebody is doing something to serve me. And I'm noticing that and I'm appreciative of that. And I think that's just really helped give a different set of eyes to us as a little unit .We see that we are for each other and that taking care of one another is precious and it deserves to be noticed and called out. So even, you know, my children do chores, but I'm always thanking them. Well, thank you for doing this and thank you for that. Or as a homeschooling mom, you know, really appreciated the way you concentrated, the way you worked hard today. It really made the day easier; thank you. So it's just catching the good in people and situations. And I think that just spills over to when life is hard, because it's hard to be grateful when things are hard. But if you're in a place where you're training to see the good in others or your circumstances, it's naturally going to bend over to or lean into seeing the good and what the Lord is doing when life is hard. So it's easier to come at it when it's in the background and just cultivate it over time. It's harder to do when things are not going well, right? When the child isn't doing their chore or dinner tasted really bad. You know, thank you for making me eat my green beans, right? It's just really—but knowing that that's important to do, then my children would say, thank you for making dinner for me, not that I liked it. So it just gives you eyes to see things in a different way. That, boy, this was good and it was enjoyable for me, but I see what you have done for me. I think that's just been a sweet lens that we've had in our home.

I really like the phrase that you used, Darby, of different set of eyes. I feel like I definitely resonate with that when it comes to this topic of gratitude that I don't realize how easily I'm slipping away or drifting from cultivating gratitude in my day-to-day life. I know that it matters. I know that it's a good thing. I know it's a Christianly thing. But how often can I go by hours and days without actually putting on and cultivating this different set of eyes and how often the eyes that I have to see the world, the lens that I'm seeing the world is actually all the things that are going wrong or, yeah, all the things that are hard and the suffering and the inconveniences and the relational difficulties and tensions. And so I really appreciate that phrase, different set of eyes. I definitely see how gratitude has been and could be even more transformative if I applied it more to other people, being able to see other people for what they're doing and genuinely appreciating them, slowing down to really see them in what they're doing. I could certainly do more of that in my life. But yeah, also as I think of gratitude, I also, in terms of how to foster it, I feel like so much of my journey of gratitude has been the struggle and this wrestling, continual reminder of the importance of remembering. I feel like so much of gratitude for me has been the practice of remembering what God has done in the past and thanking him for that and being able to see that story that he has written and continues to write and how often that does also give me a different set of eyes when I'm living in present circumstances that might actually genuinely be hard. I feel like that remembering has been an important part of my journey.

For me, I found that I can't hesitate to just start cold and to start small. And what I mean by starting cold is when I'm not feeling grateful, which is much of the time, to be honest to my shame, just not feeling grateful, I don't have an awareness of what I'm grateful for and of God's gifts. I have to start cold and I just have to start thanking God or thanking others for things that I can see are blessings and are gifts. And then also to start small. It can be a little harder sometimes for me to just dive into these deep spiritual realities or eternal realities that I am very grateful for. And when God is reminding me of those things and impressing those things on my heart I'm very grateful for. It can be helpful though sometimes just to start small and maybe just start with the room that I'm in and start looking around and thanking God for specific things in that room and what they represent and how God has given those to me and what it represents about him or other people or my relationships or situation. And that can be very helpful that then can move into some of the more, just the larger things and maybe some of the spiritual even eternal things that I think are very meaningful. And I think when gratitude starts to get a toehold in my heart, it can grow in the same way that bitterness or resentment or discontentment or disillusionment, when that gets a toehold, I can start to easily see a lot of other things through that same lens.

I like what you guys are saying. One thing, I'm very good at complaining. I could probably just complain 20 minutes without taking a breath, whether it's just about physical ailments, things I'm worried about, stressors, painful relationships, I notice all those things. They grab my attention. One thing that I do to try to come out of that is I literally lay in bed at night and I go through the alphabet, and if, depending on how, you know, if I'm really weak spiritually, I'll go through the alphabet of things that I'm thankful for, like to just begin with each letter. But what I found actually is better for me spiritually and actually assists me is going through aspects of the Lord that start with each of those letters. So it's like actually, Esther, what she's saying, like remembering, remembering that he's all knowing or that he is beautiful or that he is a Creator. And then it's like I'm forcing myself to name and remember things about who he is that are really relevant to me in the struggle. And then by the time I make it halfway through, it totally changes. Whatever I have been fixated on has a different lens. I'm looking at it a lot differently, because it's not mine to carry alone. I'm remembering who he is in the midst of whatever is in front of me. But it's just a simple little alphabet. And it's just amazing how many different things can pop up with letters in the evening when I need it the most.

That's such a beautiful exercise and such a great pathway. It gives you these stepping stones where there's always the next one for 26 of those letters and that's beautiful. I think my question is what do you do when you get to X?

I get really creative. Usually I'm asleep somewhere around P, so it's okay. I don't have to delve deep into the alphabet. By then my whole spirit is ready to rest.

What I love about that, even with some of those lesser-used letters, is the idea that when you're in that exercise, it does compel a creativity. And I think that's so much of what God does foster in us through gratitude, is he helps us to recognize his own creativity, how he has been so creative in how he's made the world and the lives he's given us and what he fills our lives with, how he creatively brings redemption through the challenges that we face, those kinds of things. And I just love how that gives you such a long runway to fall asleep on. That's a wonderful way to fall asleep.

There is definitely something to that intentionality, something to the efforts to cultivate it, the intentionality that's required to really cultivate it. It's not something we easily slip into. Like I totally resonate with you, Darby, that my default like inertia of my soul is probably towards grumbling and complaining and discontentment and this could be better and that could be better. And that's with other people, but that's also with myself, like the perfectionist side of myself that is always hard on myself; I could have done this better. I could have done more. I could have gotten more done. And yeah, just that natural drift that I keep thinking about when it comes to gratitude. There needs to be this intentionality, this current that is going upstream, I feel like in my own life for gratitude to be in the rightful place that I would want it to play in my life. And so I feel like for me, part of that intentionality, at one point I was, yeah, in a very ungrateful season probably, and I was determined, I was like, I am going to use my phone and I am going to take a picture, at least one a day, of something that I'm grateful for. And so whether that was like an uncentered ugly picture of my lunch or food or a meetup or anything along those lines, like walking out to my apartment parking lot and being like, you know, I'm grateful for my car, like fighting to find something to be grateful for. And then forcing myself to take a picture of it and then forcing myself to intentionally upload this onto an app that I use that then kind of has this function that's called On This Day. And then On This Day, when you pull it up, it actually brings back all the entries that you did on this day, even in previous years. So I started this in 2018, so now when I do On This Day, it shows me all the entries of pictures that I took since 2018 on that particular day to remind me, like, wow, there truly has been so many good gifts from the Lord in my life, from small to big. And yeah, I feel like that has been my small way of combating the lack of intentionality I can sometimes live with when it comes to cultivating gratitude.

I think what's great about that, Esther, is recognizing how much over time we see the Lord's faithfulness and over time the promises in his Word become more alive to us. And like having done that for years and years, you can even just look back, like remember and recall his faithfulness, it just makes it come alive. It's in maintaining that type of stride and discipline, this is something I'm going to do often, so that his promises become more and more evident to me and quicker to me as I'm moving through my life. And I just think that's a beautiful byproduct of leaning into something and being committed to it. Yeah, he stands out more. It’s just really sweet.

I think it's such a great group conversation question, isn't it, to ask, how do you foster gratitude? Because there's so many different ways, so many different pathways, but they're all good and they all lead us to such a better place. But as we've talked about this, we're also highlighting things like, intentionality is needed, and it can be difficult to be grateful, or we find ourselves often ungrateful. So can we talk a little bit about why can gratitude be hard? What can make gratitude difficult for us as human beings?

Yeah, I think even just going back to Esther's picture image, we're just flooded of pictures of everyone's perfect, abundant, lovely life in the world that we live in. And so it's just so easy to see that somebody has something better or has done something better. Life looks fuller. Their family reunion has 40 people at it and they're all smiling. We are just bombarded with images of other people's worlds and they often look better than the world that we're in. So I think we don't even mean to be sinfully comparing. It's just part of the way our culture is right now that we just are constantly noticing. And by that we notice often what we don't have, what we long for, or what God would want for us as well. Like oftentimes we're looking at another person's life and that is representing of something that the Lord would want for us as well. There's so many good things out there, to put it positively. Negatively is that we always want more. We always want what we want. And we get grumbly when we don't have what we want. But I think there's something also positive in that we are not living in Eden, and it's just really obvious to us.

Darby, I heard you say in the lead up to this conversation that our culture is constantly discipling us in dissatisfaction, which I think is a great way to think about it, that there's so many things that are promoted that our already dissatisfied hearts latch onto and we end up longing for and wanting in a way that is very disordered. And it's not that everything is bad. So many of the things, as you're mentioning, are good gifts, but we look at those things with a heart of comparison and with a heart of entitlement and those things lead to discontentment, other things that you've pointed out as we were talking about this. And I think that's so significant to recognize that this is one of the things that can make gratitude so hard because so many other things are filling our hearts.

Yeah, certainly that broader cultural phenomenon of this that it is our own hearts and there are also a lot of temptations and a lot of the world that is showing, teaching in some way, sending this message of you don't have enough, you could have more. And, you know, if you buy this product or, you know, if you do this or do that, then your life will be better and you'll be happier, etc.

And yeah, Darby, you know, even thinking of, you know, bombarded with images, like certainly social media, you know, that being a thing and being bombarded with, you know, someone has always likened that to, it's like comparing your real life to someone's highlight reel. It's comparing your day-to-day nitty gritty life to the best moments of someone else's life that they're choosing to post about, which usually tends to be these bigger, happy, smiley moments. But thinking that, that's their life and my life is like this. And so certainly there's a certain hardship there to maintain perspective and to be reminded of God's goodness in the midst of what we feel deprived of. Yeah, it's hard. Also the reality that we live in a broken world, that there is genuine heartache and suffering in this world. And certainly when I reflect on seasons when gratitude was the hardest was when life was really hard and there were genuinely difficult circumstances that made me wonder and even question, God, are you here? Are you for me? Are you with me? So I think that's just another one of those categories of where gratitude can get really difficult.

I think that's an important contrast to me because again, just thinking of my own kids and parenting, we often said it's not a sin to be disappointed. You can express it sinfully, but it's okay to be disappointed. So I think it's like, as we're thinking about cultivating gratitude, the other side of that is being honest about where you're disappointed, right? And it's like, yeah, I wish my life looked like this, Lord, but it doesn't. I don't have this relationship that I would really value. That doesn't mean that you're not a grateful person, but you're just disappointed with your circumstances. And then turning to the Lord and saying, Lord, again, give me those eyes to see for the blessings that you have put in my life, because they're really hard to see right now, because this disappointing thing is just taking up so much space. I think being able to acknowledge both. I'm just really aware of so many people who want to spiritually bypass the hard or think that as Christians we have to be expressing gratitude, if we're not expressing, I'm thankful even for my suffering. Well, that's true. It's not the whole story, right? And so we want to just be really careful. In order to have an honest gratitude, we have to be honest with where we're struggling and we're disappointed and where we feel unfulfilled or have good longings, good God-honoring longings that haven't been met.

I think that's such a helpful clarifying point that we're talking about cultivating an honest gratitude over time, not a what I call platitude gratitude, which is I think what you almost have to fall into if we just deny that the hard things are hard and we try to silence those things and we're not allowed to express those if we can't groan over difficult circumstances and we just try to silence that, then I think we can end up with this platitude version of gratitude, a kind of bumper sticker version of it that really doesn't cultivate the kinds of things that we're talking about here and instead leads to this kind of disjointed soul where I'm trying to say something on the outside that's not being cultivated on the inside and then what is on the inside I'm not allowed to communicate, I'm not allowed to share those things and to seek the Lord's help, support, mercy, and grace in that.

Yeah, I think for a long time when I thought of gratitude, it was kind of used against myself in the sense of, there are a lot of hard things happening in my life, but look at all these other things that I should be grateful for, as a way to cover up and undo and erase all the hard things. Like, here I am disappointed, you know, Darby, what you were saying, disappointed and trying to use gratitude as a way to say, I should be grateful. I shouldn't be disappointed. I should be thankful to God. I should see his goodness. In all these ways that try to erase the genuine hard and disappointment. And it was a turning point for me to realize that gratitude is actually meant to coexist with sorrow, not replace it. There are ways in which I can sorrow and grieve and be genuinely sad at the Lord's providence and the way that my life has gone in ways that I didn't hope for or wish for, that I would have written a different way. But in the midst of that, seeing the Lord's ongoing work in my life. Somehow seeing the Lord's ongoing work in my life though, didn't erase what was hard. It was almost a sorrow and joy that could intermix and coexist beautifully. And I think when I really learned that, I felt really thankful that I felt like I was getting closer to what God intended for gratitude to be and to step away from what gratitude was never meant to be, which is trying to ignore, dismiss genuine suffering and heartache.

Yeah, there's such a relief that we don't have to conjure up something in and of ourselves, right? I mean, gratitude is just really a way of remembering who God is and what he's done for us. And we can do that in the hard and in the good, right? And so if we take it to its root of what it is, it's not just the glittery things. It is in the seasons of the quite hard. I think that's a really helpful thing to remember.

I can't remember when it was, but I think a couple of years ago I noticed in looking through Philippians 1 that Paul in Philippians 1 and all throughout Philippians really is able to communicate all of these different experiences at once. And in Philippians 1, he talks about how he's in prison and he's seeing the gospel still go forth. There are people who are trying to cause him trouble. But he says in this preaching of the gospel, I rejoice and I will rejoice. And then right after that, he says, I'm really stretched and hard pressed right now between two things. I want to depart and I want to be with Christ. I have a longing to see him, but it seems like what's best is for me to stay here for your progress and joy in the faith. But he's clearly strained as he's in prison, not knowing what awaits him, but believing he's going to still be there for the Philippians and other churches that he loves. But he can say those things at once that he rejoices and he declares that he will, and that he's really facing a stressful and difficult time. And it really, I think, gave me a more textured perspective, not only on Paul and Philippians, but also on my own life, that as you said, Esther, those things coexist in very delicate ways and they're held that way in the hands of God.

I think when you're talking, Gunner, it's making me think of humility is kind of at the core of that because in the midst of that wrestling, Paul said, whatever you want. And I think that's probably the end of gratitude is recognizing, yeah, these are, this is what the Lord has planned for me. And with that, you know, I'm going to delight in that this is what he has for me. That takes a humbleness, to say his plans for me are far better than what my plans are. So I think there's just something, the humility is probably very central to the gratitude, which I think is again countercultural because in our culture it's if we work hard enough, if we do these things, then I'm going to be blessed. Even if I'm righteous, I'm gonna be blessed, versus recognizing no, everything we have, every good gift is from the Lord. And so humility is just a key to being able to see accurately and receive what the Lord has given.

I was thinking as you're sharing, Darby, that it's so important to be careful of so many half-truths that are in our culture and that are in our hearts that look like they're going down a similar path to gratitude, but they don't have all the ingredients baked in as scriptural gratitude actually does and spiritful gratitude does. Because I was thinking there's so much talk in our culture about positive thinking or about optimism or about like failing forward or things like this that have really helpful truths in them, but also are not by any means the complete picture and don't have to include God, they don't have to include Christ in the gospel, they don't have to include just the beautiful scriptural vision of a world created by God, overseen by him, and lovingly brought on a journey of redemption as he redeems his own people and plans for a new creation in the future. Those things culturally don't include the things that really fill out a vision of gratitude for a Christian. And so it's just important for me to remember that because as you're saying, humility is, an acceptance of the will of God for my life is a key part of what gratitude both fosters and also what leads to gratitude. But that's a distinctly Christian vision for life that does have such an impact on the day-to-day.

Yeah, because we're talking about gratitude in a way that's a worship response, right? And it's a heart posture. It's not just a listing of blessings. And doing that requires, it has different ingredients, for sure.

Can we talk about this for a minute? As God helps us foster gratitude, as we've been talking about, what does he foster in us through the process? What are some other things that God is building into us, that he's cultivating in us as he helps us to cultivate gratitude?

Yeah, I would say just getting back to the humility, I think gratitude humbles us. It puts us in our right relationship with the Lord and other people. And I just think that's just really helpful. Instead of me being the center, I become a worshipper and as someone who is called to love God and to serve other people. And I think that's just a wonderful byproduct of gratitude, just the humility that it fosters.

I keep going back to your phrase, different set of eyes, Darby. I think that's genuinely what it fosters in me. It's a different set of eyes in the midst of eyes that tend to have selective memory, narrow perspective on the things that are going wrong, the things that are hard, and learning to expand that narrowness of what my eyes tend to see and widening the gaze to the goodness of God. That not only means that there are good things in the midst of the hard, but also that the hard things are under his providence, that somehow one day I know I'll be able to look back and testify that the Lord's love was there and his presence was there, even if I don't fully understand it now. But I think that different set of eyes is what strikes me in terms of what gratitude fosters. So a whole different perspective going through, living through the same circumstances, and yet with a different vantage point, different views, different things to take in and absorb and process and receive.

I think it probably actually infuses us with hope as well, because we live expectantly when we are grateful people. We are looking at what is the Lord up to versus stuck in our own reality and limited to our own imaginations. We live more expectantly of how is he going to show up. I've just seen that in a lot of the women I counsel who are in really hard situations. When they begin to see God in really small things, they're like, you'll never believe it, the way the Lord blessed me this week. It's like once they catch a vision for one thing, they begin to live very expectantly. It's just a beautiful transformation of what's he going to do next. And particularly when you're at a low point, it's a great way to live. Just being able to cling to hope when you have no reason, earthly reason, to hope.

It reminds me of something I noticed recently in Scripture that I had never seen before. And it's this geographical thing that happens in the Bible where there's something small that grows into something very large. And it starts with, you know, when Abraham's wife, Sarah, dies, he buys this field from the Hittites, and it's in Hebron, and it's this burial place for his family, so a grievous place. And then eventually Abraham’s family ends up down in Egypt, but that little piece of land is this toehold in what is actually the land of promise, and that his family is going to make their way back to and actually inheriting the whole land. And so there’s the patriarchs, wives, they end up buried there in Hebron, and again when Israel’s enslaved in Egypt for more than four centuries, Hebron’s just this little toehold, but it was rightfully purchased, and so it's rightfully owned by this promised family. And it's this kind of harbinger foreshadowing of things to come. It's actually a city that Joshua and Caleb visit when they spy out Canaan, but the other ten spies and the people refuse to go in, so they don't inherit either Hebron or the whole land. And then it's actually Caleb who requests Hebron as part of his inheritance when Joshua and the Israelites make their way into the promised land finally. And then because Hebron's in Judah, it becomes the first place from which David reigns as king for seven and a half years before he becomes king in Jerusalem. And then Hebron becomes part of the entire promised land. And it just was so striking to trace that out and to see that, as you said, Darby, there are these toeholds that we have of God's work in our lives that might seem so small, that might have been granted to us in places of great suffering and loss, and yet they can be such symbols of the fullness of what God is going to do in the future. And I'm just stunned not only by how small that story starts and how big it becomes, how small that purchase starts and how large the inheritance is, but also by such a long timeframe and the patience needed. And for that family to continue to look back on what God has done, as you said, Esther, earlier, to remember what he's done, to remember who he is in the midst of all the travails and trials that they go through. I just love how God so often starts so small in our eyes and yet is leading to such different things. And I just want to have eyes for the small things so that I can also see the big things.

I like how you're putting that too, Gunner, because for most of us we have to start bite-sized. We don't have hearts of gratitude. I think that's why we're talking about cultivating gratitude. So we're just saying to the Lord, help me shape my heart so that I see what you're up to and I can delight in what you're doing in my life and the people's lives around me. Give me those eyes. It's not something we can conjure; it's something that we ask for. And I think just putting it on the right human scale for us is just saying, Lord, help me make these incremental adjustments in how I'm seeing the world, is a great way to start.

Can we try this to end? Can we play the alphabet game, Darby?

Sure.

Let's go through the alphabet. Since we're on a podcast, we can't fall asleep at P.

Uh oh, we have to get to X.

But we'll continue to the end. I already have ideas. So how do we play again?

We just go through the letters and I do things that I'm, attributes of the Lord, things about him that I'm thankful for. 

That's wonderful. We can just chime in and as you listen, you can come up with your own things for each letter or rejoice over the ones that we're sharing as well. I'm thankful for the affections of the Lord for his people.

For his bountiful mercies.

For his care that is there every day.

For his delight over us.

And his eyes are always on us.

For his faithfulness and his mercies that are new every morning.

For his goodness, that all that he does, there is a good heart and purpose behind it, even if I can't see it.

For his holiness that is always attentive to me.

For his irresistible grace that can't be turned away, like with the apostle Paul when he just chased him down.

For the justice that he promises in this broken world.

The thing I'm thinking of is for the Psalms of Korah, because I really like those Psalms.

That's much better. I was thinking, thanking God for kangaroos, creating them. I think of a K word.

Kora and kangaroos.

Yes. For his love, I've been reflecting on Psalm 136, for his steadfast love endures forever. Through many, yeah, providences, through many realities to be able to say for his steadfast love endures forever has been precious to me. So, love.

For the miracles of Christ through which we see so much of just the fullness of God's character.

For his never-ending pursuit of his children. There's so many O's, but they're all those big theological words. His omnipresence, his omniscience.

You guys are in a different world right now. I'm like oranges, orangutans…

We're covering the whole spectrum.

I am thankful that he is omniscient though. He knows all things. I can rest in that.

I'll say pizza, Esther, just to bring us back to reality. I really enjoy warm cheese, right? But the fact that he, yeah, made us in such a way that he gives us delight in pizza, right? Yeah.

Actually Q makes me think of the alphabet game, which I've spent a lot of time playing growing up on road trips where you have to go A through Z like this, but how many fun times I've enjoyed with my family and so thankful for the word quality that often came up. Thinking just about the quality of the Lord and the qualities of the Lord, how full they are, how rich.

He's a reassuring God. He doesn't tire of telling us to trust him and that it will be okay and that he has us and he's here to help us. He's just constantly reassuring his people.

Steadfast love stands out to me.

I'm thankful that he turns towards us rather than away, even if there's not much to look at from our vantage point. He's the Lord who turns towards us with his countenance.

He understands us at great cost to himself. He knows his people and he really understands us.

I think of the veil that was torn in the temple to open the way to God and all that that represents.

He's a God who woos us. We don’t always get it right. We're not always on the right track. We don't always know what's best for us. And he's one who gently woos us to himself and to his ways.

For X, what I've been thinking is actually the Greek word Christos for Christ or the Messiah that starts with a capital letter that is an X in Greek, and U have always loved that X actually as a symbol which it for many centuries has been of the Christian faith with Christ at the center and really the kind of fountainhead of all of our gratitude.

Yeah, alongside that is just Yahweh, and just all, really the many names by which he reveals himself to us. Yeah, just making me think of the names of the Lord and how they accommodate our very finite understanding of who he is.

For Z, the word that keeps bumping around in my head has been zigzag. And what I mean is just in all of the different ways that our lives go that God is consistent and faithful and how he watches over every twist, every turn, every surprise, all the things that tempt me to be so ungrateful, he's still overseeing and orchestrating. And I've seen that in my life so much in the past 12 months, I would say that I'm just very grateful for the Lord's care over my zigzagging life.

How'd you like the alphabet game, Gunner?

I really like it. And what's striking is that we were able to do that for quite some time just to kind of pause and slowly reflect. And each one of those letters leads us in a different direction, but really in the same direction. And so thank you for sharing that.

Friends, I hope that this has been a blessing to you as I know it has been to me, just to reflect on the goodness of God, on the gift of gratitude, and on the pleasure of doing gratitude, giving gratitude, meditating on the God of gratitude in community, to do it together. So thanks Darby and Esther, I've really enjoyed the conversation, and I hope that this stirs you all up to see the Lord with new eyes. Thanks for listening.