The Power of Gratitude: How Books Focusing on Thankfulness Draw Us Closer to Our Purpose

Few virtues are as crucial as thankfulness. A spirit of gratitude is not just a social nicety, but it is a transformative force that shapes our perspectives and enriches our journeys in faith and life.

In the Christian tradition, gratitude is more than a polite acknowledgment of blessings (though it is that, too); it is a profound acknowledgment of God’s mercy and grace. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” writes Paul to the ancient church in Rome. Scripture lays out the foundation for understanding that gratitude is a disposition of the heart that reflects a deep trust in our Creator. Thankfulness is good for the human who holds it dearly in his heart, but it is, more profoundly, a correct and good response to the nature of God in His majesty and goodness.

One of our challenges is to choose gratitude regardless of our circumstance. Probably the greatest way to center our spirit on gratitude is through service of others—providing for the need of a fellow human holds up a mirror revealing the countless ways our own needs are being met.

As the only storytelling creatures, literature provides another entry point to increasing our gratitude. In great literature, we find echoes of the Christian principle of gratitude, illustrating how this state of mind is dundamental to Man’s relationship to God and to human flourishing.

Within the pages of literary classics, we encounter characters who, faced with trials and triumphs, embody the spirit of gratitude. From the pages of these books, such as the inspiring account of Corrie ten Boom in The Hiding Place, literature becomes a canvas where the brushstrokes of gratitude paint vibrant portraits of resilience, faith, and thanksgiving.

And in contemporary works, too, such as Body: or, How Hope Confronts Her Shadow and Calls the Flutter Girl to Flight by Sean Coons, we find that gratitude takes center stage in the protagonist’s quest to live and thrive as she was designed. Body‘s protagonist, Hope, is not particularly ungrateful. But she has a typical human experience: She is grateful for the obviously good things in her life; she allows disappointments and frustrations to fester in growing resentment. The latter is, of course, a trap, for resentment is poison to the human soul.

Resentment brings Hope to her knees in catastrophe and self-disgust. And it is here, at her lowest, that she begins to look up. It is in a state of emptiness that she becomes aware of the true nature of gratitude as a way of being—not simply as an obvious response to life going her way. And then a magical thing happens. She begins to experience a fullness of life beyond what she had imagined before . . . a fullness that will give her strength and vitality—qualities she will need if she is going to help her niece Lana, who has fallen into her own trap of anorexia.