More thoughts on thanks...

I was thinking a but further on my last post (see The Power of Thanks) and thought I'd add a bit more. We were thinking how "thank you" reminds us that life is amazing and how it establishes a relationship. It made me reflect further on Professor Richard Dawkins - you know, the one who is so angry with the God he doesn't believe in.

Prof Dawkins says we don't need God to have feelings of awe and wonder at the universe. But he's wrong! What we feel as believers when we see a sky full of brilliant stars, or the sunlight sparkling on the river, or the miracle of someone being born, is different. It's different because we have someone to say thank you to. Prof Dawkins' personal feelings have no echo in the cold, dead universe he lives in. In fact those feelings only emphasise his loneliness in the universe. They disconnect him from it, because it can't feel anything at all in response. 

By contrast, something very like gratitude rises up in our hearts when we respond to our amazing world. We are acknowledging that there is Person behind the universe who has expressed His love and power and fertility in creating both it and us. We are expressing a deep connectedness with our Creator and His creation. Saying Thank you puts us in a deep way in tune with fundamental reality, because it establishes a personal relationship with the One behind it all. 

As Psalm 111 says, "Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them."