Give Thanks 1: When Now Is Hard and You Can’t See Ahead

This is the first devotional on Give Thanks, this year’s theme to prepare us to pray for prodigals on June 2, the Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day. This and the next four devotionals will be focused on those who love a prodigal, but they are true and helpful for anyone.

When you love a prodigal, you know about hard, challenging days, months, years. When you add to that two years of covid issues, financial strains, natural disasters, and wars around the world, we live in a constant state of uncertainty and feeling out of control.

The children of Israel certainly lived with uncertainty and out of control: traveling into the unknown, famine, slavery, wars, persecution.

Yet we read these amazing words in Psalm 95:

1 Come, let us sing to the Lord!
    Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
    Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
3 For the Lord is a great God,
    a great King above all gods.
4 He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
    and the mightiest mountains.

5 The sea belongs to him, for he made it.
    His hands formed the dry land, too.

6 Come, let us worship and bow down.
    Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,
7     for he is our God.
We are the people he watches over,
    the flock under his care.

Our natural response in times of uncertainty as we have been experiencing, and in life with a prodigal and the fears and frustrations we encounter, is to name everything that is wrong, to complain about all we don’t like

And that can be helpful and healing—to name our fears and displeasure. And our God receives our honest laments.

But He also encourages us to give thanks.

How do we do that?

I have discovered a helpful phrase that works wonders in my heart and mind: Look for the good.

I admit it is easier to see the good in retrospect, which I have been able to do as our former prodigal is in a good place. But God convinced me to make this a habit early in our wilderness journey.

I didn’t do it easily or consistently, but choosing to look for the good and give thanks has transformed me.

Here are just a few of the “good” things I have discovered as I have looked for the good:

1.    Mercy and grace—to receive them and to give them and to see how they changed our relationship with our prodigal.

2.   Love—God’s love is unconditional. He loves us no matter what we do or don’t do, and He asks us to love that way. Gratefully He shares His love with us.

3.   Prayer—I thought I knew how to pray, but our prodigal drove me to my knees and into a much deeper relationship with God.

4.   Perseverance—I had to keep relying on God to carry me through the darkest times. And he did.

5.   Gratitude—As I learned to give thanks in our prodigal journey, I also learned to do the same in every situation—large or small.

So I invite you to join me in looking for the good, to give thanks, as the psalmist exhorts us:

 1. Come, let us sing to the Lord!
    Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2. Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
    Let us sing psalms of praise to him.

Here’s a song to help: Thank You by Jonathan Helser

c2022 Judy Douglass

We would love to pray for any prodigals you know. Send first names of those you want prayed for to PrayerforProdigals@gmail.com. And tell your friends who love a prodigal.