Thank you for the flowers and the green grass, thank you for the trees, thank you for the birds, thank you for my house, thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesus. Amen.
As a kid, I didn’t have a problem with gratitude, at least most of the time. I could almost always find something to be thankful about. Even without cognitively counting my blessings, I intuitively responded to life by thanking God for the good things.
Maybe it had something to do with that dusty Pollyanna book I found in my great-grandmother’s cellar when she was “breaking up housekeeping” to retire to a nursing home. Pollyanna approached life by “playing the glad game”—“when you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other.” 
She made an impact on me. Pollyanna knew how to look at life and be happy.
I sometimes find myself criticizing the grumbling Israelites. “Didn’t they get it? God parted the Red Sea for them—what else could they ask for?”
Then I encounter my own wilderness experiences, real life tests for “the glad game.” In some of those desert wanderings, I thirst. At other times, I grow weary with God’s provision—the same manna every day. In still other moments, I long for days past—the counterfeit freedoms of slavery, sure food, a certainty of a place of rest.
Or the promise of a brighter future seems too unbelievable in present circumstances. And in darker days, I want out. Just get me out of this ugly, dry, hard, exhausting, barren place—even if it means slavery. I’m tempted to believe the lie that anything is better than what I’m experiencing. Like the Israelites, I’m confronted with the ugliness of my own ungrateful heart.
I’ve found when I struggle, it stems from unbelief in God’s goodness and ingratitude for His provision. He didn’t give me what I wanted, expected, or asked for. He didn’t make my life easy. He didn’t answer my prayers, cries, and questions the way my genie-deity should. He didn’t part my seas and deliver me. So I doubted His goodness and care. I failed to thank Him for the help of His presence, the certainty of His love, and the assurance of His grace even in the difficult times.
Those are the times when He gently reminds me to be glad.
It’s a choice—a decision to deliberately look for the good today and to remember the blessings of the past. Childhood thank-yous and Pollyanna glad games. And remembering to trust my good God even when the gladness comes with pain.
