Gratitude is never easy. In good times or bad.
When life is tough, it feels impossible — how am I supposed to be grateful for looming debts? Or for the mass riots happening right now? Yet when life is good, I just as easily forget. I forget that what I enjoy is fleeting, a small spark brought into my life by many unseen hands.

This afternoon it rains. I sit on the front porch with my hot black tea — jasmine-scented, comforting — and try to process all that’s happening around me. The public anger toward parliament members. The brutality of police during the protests. The looting of VVIP houses by hundreds. Even the burning of public facilities.

Not some—many people forget gratitude when they hold power. And in that forgetfulness, arrogance swells, making them appear even bigger than they are.

I see this pattern everywhere: in government, in my office, in this housing complex, in church, in schools. Yet I still believe life finds its own way to teach us its most important lesson: to live gratefully.

I don’t write this as someone finished with gratitude’s lessons. I am still in the middle of them. But I do find it easier now to notice the little sparks, no matter what my situation is.

Debts. Riots. Rain.
These are what I need most.
I accept them—gratefully.

Amen.

*Karin Sabrina*