Dear friend,
I want to tell you something tonight that I could not have told you twenty years ago.
Not because I did not know the words. I knew the words. I have been with the Church for fifty years and I have always known the right words for gratitude. I have preached on it. I have counselled people toward it. I have said thank you to God every morning for longer than I can remember.
But there is a difference between knowing the words for gratitude and actually feeling the weight of what you have been given.
That difference took me decades to understand. And tonight I want to tell you what I have learned. Because I think some of you are where I was twenty years ago — surrounded by gifts you cannot yet see because you are too close to them or too tired or too worried about what you do not have to notice what you do.
The first thing I am grateful for tonight that I was not grateful for twenty years ago.
Silence.
Twenty years ago silence made me uncomfortable. I filled it. With prayer that was really talking. With reading that was really activity. With the business of ministry that kept the quiet at a distance.
I did not understand then what I understand now.
Silence is where God lives. Not exclusively. But primarily. The still small voice that Elijah heard in First Kings chapter 19 did not come in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. It came after all of them. In the quiet that followed.
I used to rush past the quiet to get to the next thing. Now I sit in it deliberately. Every morning before the day begins. Every evening before I sleep. Not because I always hear something. Because the silence itself has become precious to me in a way I cannot fully explain. It feels like the presence of someone who does not need to speak to be present.
I wasted a great deal of silence in my younger years. I am grateful for every quiet moment I have left.
The second thing I am grateful for that I was not grateful for twenty years ago.
The people who told me hard things.
Twenty years ago I valued the people who agreed with me. Who affirmed what I believed and confirmed what I suspected and made me feel that my understanding of things was correct. Those people felt like gifts.
I understand now that they were comforts. Not gifts.
The gifts were the people who said things I did not want to hear. Who pushed back. Who sat across from me and said Father I think you are wrong about this. Who cared enough about me to risk the relationship by being honest inside it.
Those people are rare. And when you are young you often mistake their honesty for unkindness. You pull back. You surround yourself with people who are easier to be around.
And then you get older. And you realize that the people who told you the truth when it cost them something were the people who loved you most. And the ones who only ever agreed with you were the ones who loved their access to you more than they loved you.
I am grateful tonight for the people who told me hard things. I did not thank them enough when I had the chance.
The third thing I am grateful for that I was not grateful for twenty years ago.
Unanswered prayers.
I know how that sounds. But stay with me.
Twenty years ago I had a list of prayers that had not been answered. Specific things I had asked for specifically and had not received. I carried that list with something that I told myself was faith but was closer to grievance. A quiet, careful record of the things God had not done that I had asked Him to do.
I understand now what I could not see then.
Some of those unanswered prayers were the most merciful things God ever did for me. The thing I wanted at forty that I did not receive — I can see now, from where I am standing at seventy, exactly why it would have been wrong for me. Exactly what it would have cost me that I could not afford to lose. Exactly how the path I was actually given, the one I did not choose and did not want, produced something that the path I was asking for never could have.
In Romans chapter 8 verse 28 Paul wrote that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
All things. Not just the answered prayers. The unanswered ones too. The closed doors. The wrong turns. The things you asked for that would have destroyed you if you had received them.
I am grateful tonight for every prayer God said no to. I did not understand it then. I am beginning to understand it now.
The fourth thing I am grateful for that I was not grateful for twenty years ago.
Ordinary Tuesdays.
Twenty years ago I was always waiting for the significant moments. The important conversations. The meaningful experiences. The days that would matter. I moved through ordinary days as through something to be endured on the way to something worth remembering.
I understand now that the ordinary days were the life.
The Tuesday morning with the coffee going cold on the desk while I read. The walk in the late afternoon when the light was a particular color and nothing happened except that I was alive and outside and the air smelled like autumn. The unremarkable meal with an unremarkable person who said something small and true that I have never forgotten.
In Psalm 118 verse 24 David wrote this is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.
This day. Not the important ones. Not the milestone ones. This specific, ordinary, unremarkable day that God made and placed you inside and filled with small things that most people walk past without noticing.
I spent too many years walking past them. I am grateful for the ones I have left. Every single Tuesday of them.
The fifth thing I am grateful for that I was not grateful for twenty years ago.
The fact that I was wrong about so many things.
Twenty years ago being wrong felt like failure. I held my convictions tightly and defended them loudly and did not enjoy the experience of discovering that I had misunderstood something I thought I understood.
I am grateful for every correction now. For every moment when something I held with certainty turned out to be smaller or more complicated or simply incorrect. Because being wrong means you are still learning. Still moving. Still in the process of becoming something more accurate than what you were before.
The people who are never wrong are not the wisest people in the room. They are the most frightened ones. The ones who have decided that their current understanding is worth protecting more than the truth is worth finding.
I would rather be wrong and corrected than right and static.
I have been wrong about a great many things. I am grateful for every correction I received. And for the God who was patient enough to keep correcting me across fifty years without giving up.
I want to tell you one more thing before I close.
One of the things I am most grateful for tonight — something I genuinely could not have anticipated twenty years ago — is the community that has gathered around these letters.
You came from living rooms and hospital waiting rooms and kitchen tables and car parks at the end of long days. You wrote to me about your fears and your grief and your faith and your hope. You trusted a man you had never met with things you had never told anyone else.
I did not expect that when I started writing. I did not know I needed it. And I am more grateful for it than I know how to say.
Part of what I wanted to give back — to put something in your hands that was worth the trust you placed in me — is why I wrote They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. It is the clearest thing I have written. The most direct. The thing I was most afraid to write and most grateful that I did. If you have not read it yet I want you to read it this week. Not because of the politics. Because I believe it will give you something to be grateful for that you were not expecting. You can find it by clicking on the image below:
Alternatively, you may find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I want to close with the thing I am most grateful for of all.
That God did not give up on me when I was not paying attention.
In my thirties I was busy. In my forties I was important. In my fifties I was tired. And through all of it — the business and the importance and the exhaustion — God was patient. He did not remove Himself when I was not looking for Him. He did not withdraw His hand when I was too distracted to notice it. He simply waited. With the patience that only Someone who exists outside of time can have. Until I was quiet enough to hear what He had been saying the whole time.
That patience is the thing I am most grateful for tonight. Because I did not deserve it. And it was given anyway.
That is grace. The specific, personal, inexhaustible grace of a God who is more patient with us than we are with ourselves. Who holds on longer than anyone else would. Who calls it a still small voice rather than a shout because He is confident enough in the relationship to wait for the quiet rather than compete with the noise.
I am grateful for that voice tonight. I am grateful you are still listening for it.
God bless you, friend. Take a moment tonight to sit in the quiet and count what you have.
You have more than you know.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do two things:
One. Write down five things you are grateful for tonight that you would not have been grateful for twenty years ago. Not the obvious ones. The surprising ones. The hard things that turned out to be gifts. The unanswered prayers that turned out to be mercy. The corrections that turned out to be kindness. Write them down. Read them again tomorrow morning before you read anything else.
Two. Read They Tried To Stop Him this week: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I wrote it as an act of gratitude — for the clarity to see what I believe God is doing, and for the community that made me want to say it clearly. I think it will give you something to add to your list.
P.S. If you want to go deeper on anything I have written, everything is available at fatherthomasletters.com/products — including The Signs Are Here, which maps today's headlines directly against the specific passages that described them, and the Father Thomas Prayer Card Collection, which many of you have told me you return to every morning. Take a look when you have a moment.