Still learning to be thankful in all circumstances

I’ve been sharing news of WORLD—and occasional personal notes—in this space for just more than 10 years. My first Thanksgiving column was due the day before the 2016 presidential election. I admitted then that not knowing how the election would turn out made it easier to write about being thankful for the outcome, whatever it would be. Ten years later, I’m still learning to be thankful in all circumstances.

This year, as an organization, we have much to be thankful for. In the past few weeks, we have noted two milestones.

First, we celebrated 15 years and more than 100 million downloads of our daily news podcast, The World and Everything in It. In the early years, when downloads were measured in thousands, not millions, we did not know how long we would be able to keep doing it. We were thankful for the opportunity then, and we are thankful now for a program that serves our audience as well as anything we do.

Also, I mentioned last November that our daily video news program for public schools, The World from A to Z, was consistently viewed in about 35,000 classrooms every day. One year later, that number has risen to 46,000. Most are middle school classrooms, with some high school and older elementary classes in the mix. We make the program free, with almost all of the funding coming from our donors. That means thousands of public school classrooms are receiving biblically objective reporting every day, even though the program does not employ explicitly Christian language. That’s something we can be thankful for.

Of course, neither of these programs—and none of WORLD’s work—would be possible without the people God has brought alongside us. We are thankful for staff members who devote their talents and energies to this work, for readers, listeners, and viewers who welcome us into their daily lives, and for donors and subscribers whose generosity makes it possible. We don’t take any of them for granted. They are gifts from God, and we are grateful.

The past year has not been without its difficulties. We once again have endured medical issues among our staff and the loss of close family members to death. These are reminders of how much suffering and sorrow can accompany even a year of abundant blessing. We have also faced, less significantly, business headwinds from the rising cost of, well, just about everything. Not everything we have tried has been successful, and some projects have made far less progress than we had hoped.

Two passages of Scripture come to mind. Both are songs of praise to God, but the circumstances they describe could hardly be more different. And there’s something worth noticing in what the two have in common. The first is Psalm 65:

You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

Then there’s this song from Habakkuk, with a very different perspective on our praise:

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The contrast is striking. In one passage, the fields overflow with grain and the pastures with flocks. In the other, the fields produce nothing, and the flocks are gone. Yet both writers respond with praise to God.

That is the lesson I’m still learning, 10 years after writing that first Thanksgiving column. Whether in abundance or in drought, we give thanks to God for who He is, and for the ways He works His good purposes in our lives.