Ingratitude Day

by Lillian Daniel | published on Nov 30, 2024

I am worn out from my groaning. – Psalm 6:6 (NIV) 

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving—a strange holiday with a complex history that leaves some families bonded and others blown apart—I devote today’s devotional to all who woke up feeling as beat up as burnt turkey gravy on a dirty dishrag.  

To you, I offer a brief meditation on the biblical benefits of being ungrateful, regardless of November’s overall messaging of generic gratitude in drugstore greeting card aisles around the USA, featuring a canned cornucopia of Bible verses plucked out of context and used to caption a horn-shaped basket without any clear purpose other than to be left in the middle of a table surrounded by dried out gourds.  

And I know that this same Saturday leaves many other people feeling as full and happy as one can be after eating too many pies. They looked forward to the time with friends and family, and experienced it as a blessing. If this is your bliss right now, this devotional may not have your name on it … yet. 

But trust me. Ingratitude comes to us all, eventually. Open your Bible and see for yourself. 

If you read the psalms, more words are devoted to lament than will ever make it into a football-themed “This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for you, Sport!” greeting card, which, by this special Saturday, is now marked half off of half off.  

This tension between gratitude and ingratitude has been with us throughout human history. “Be thankful for what you have” is good advice in some cases, but in others it is a spiritual shaming used to shut down debate, questions, lament, protest and revolution. As for my newly invented Ingratitude Day, while I pray it may be a balm for someone’s wounded and weary soul today, I also recognize that tomorrow it could become yet another excuse for self-centered people like me to avoid giving God thanks for the many things I did not earn.  

Prayer
Dear Giving God, today I’m thankful that I don’t have to feel thankful to be thankful for your love.

Lillian Daniel About the Author
Lillian Daniel serves as Conference Minister with the Michigan Conference UCC. She is the author of Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To and When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not Enough.