Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on August 3, 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores starting each day with gratitude, revealing how beginning each morning with thankfulness transforms our perspective on life’s challenges. He challenges us to replace worry and distractions with remembering God’s blessings, even when circumstances seem difficult.

How do you start your day? What is the thing that you do when you first wake up? Is it to hit snooze and roll over? Is it to worry about all of the responsibilities that you have in the day ahead? Is it to check your phone notifications or your social media? Or my temptation is always to look at the news to see what terrible thing has happened now. It will be no surprise to you that none of these are ideal ways to start the day. None of these are a good start and there is a much better way to begin, and that is gratitude.

If you begin the day grateful for that which lies ahead, grateful for the gift of a new day. If you remember what you have instead of what you don’t have, if you remember the blessings of friends and family and health and a roof above your head and food on the table at breakfast time, this is a better way to start the day and it is such a good discipline.

Research shows that people who are grateful are surprise, surprise, happier and more fulfilled in their lives and have better relationships and live longer. Gratitude is a great starting place and it is also the foundation of our relationship with God. But what this wonderful, powerful Psalm speaks to us of is an even greater vision of the ways that we are blessed, because as people of faith, we are able to be grateful even when life actually seems quite difficult, when it feels like everything is going wrong and things are very hard and the daily blessings aren’t obvious.

This is a vision of the amazing ways that we are blessed because of who God is and what he has done for us. And I think we really need to learn to remind ourselves of these things day by day because we’re so forgetful, we get so caught up in the worries and the stresses of life, and our hearts are so often and so easily filled with anxiety because of these things.

In verse two, the writer of the psalm says, praise the Lord O my soul. And forget not all his benefits. But we so easily forget or get distracted. I love that the writer is speaking to his own soul. He’s challenging himself and encouraging himself. It’s like he’s giving himself a pep talk.

I know how you’re feeling. But just remember what great blessings you have, and I think that’s such an important thing for us to do. Our hearts are easily led astray and we follow them where they go. We follow our feelings, and instead of that to remind ourselves of the ways that we are blessed is a hugely important thing to do.

And scripture is like a faithful friend. Who walks alongside us and encourages and perhaps challenges us, and we need this day by day. This is the right way to start the day. Here are some of the ways that the Psalm speaks to us of this bigger vision of how we are blessed. The first: God is a God of second chances.

God is a God of second chances. Verse three says, he forgives all your sins and heals your infirmities and redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion. The world that we live in is a world of first chances, and that’s a good thing, and that if you are lucky and you work hard and you’re smart and you don’t make any silly mistakes, you can do well. We call it a sort of meritocracy.

But what this world is terrible at is second chances. You know when it’s gone wrong, when people make mistakes. But Christianity is by definition, the belief in second chances, that because of God life has never gone so wrong that it can’t be put right. That there is always hope. There is always the possibility of a new start.

Did you like that line verse four? He redeems your life from the pit. And the idea of life going to waste is a terrible thing. The pit is the kind of the rubbish tip. It’s that place where lives end up and so many of us can tell a story of the way God has rescued us from a mess, usually of our own making.

And he plucks us up out of the dust, and he sets us on our feet once more. God is a God of second chances. And he crowns us with love and compassion. To be crowned is to be given dignity and status. And your life has worth. You matter because you are loved by God and you are surrounded by his compassion. We live in a world where only the fortunate few have that kind of status and dignity, but in Christ, that is God’s gift for you.

And no matter what’s happened in your life, no matter where you have been, you can have a second beginning. You can have a new start, and you can find yourself crowned with love and compassion. God is a God of second chances. Secondly, you don’t get what you deserve. So one of the things that often pains us the most is when we work for something and it doesn’t work out, and there is no more passionate cry than it’s not fair.

The smallest child knows what it means to have fairness or the lack of it. But actually, I would like to suggest to you that not getting what you deserve is really good news. You know, the quote by Mother Teresa. We all need more love than we deserve. We all need more love than we deserve, and we also all need more mercy and forgiveness than we deserve.

Verse 10 says, the Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Aren’t those wonderful verses? You don’t get what you deserve.

Never take that for granted. You may have heard that a thousand times, but you have no right to the mercy of God. It is the wonderful, astonishing initiative of God, and we know the cost of that. We know that Jesus goes to the cross, that sins might be forgiven, and there he says It is finished. It is done.

So we don’t have to live with shame and regret. That in Christ, our sins can be wiped out, our transgressions removed and placed a world away from us. We don’t get what we deserve. Instead, we get the love and the mercy of God, if only we will ask for it. And then thirdly, we are taught to call God Father.

Verse 13 says: as a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. That theme of calling God father is there in the Old Testament in verses like this but it’s Jesus who really takes hold of that and models it and teaches us to call God our Father and to pray that.

Jesus teaches us that God is not cold and distant and authoritarian and judgmental, but instead is compassionate. A kind wise father who longs to relate to us as a good father relates to his children. And so therefore, you do not need to be afraid. If God is your father, what can you be afraid of? God is the God of the whole world.

As verse 19 says, the Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all things. Nothing is too big for God. Nothing beyond his redeeming and nowhere is too far from the presence of the God who you learn to call Father. This is where we should begin our days, no matter what’s going on in life, no matter how hard it seems.

Remembering this richness of blessing, remembering that we have learned that God is always a God of second chances, that there’s always a new beginning, that we don’t get what we deserve, and that we have learned to call God, Father. What a place to begin our days. What a foundation upon which to build our lives.

So why don’t we try to build our lives and to start our days on gratitude to remember the blessings that are ours through faith. And it doesn’t always come easy. Like any good discipline it might be hard at the beginning, but it gets easier as we practice it. And we’ll fail and fall short, but pick ourselves up and try again.

And that building our lives on gratitude will change things. It will teach us to receive each day as a gift. To trust God for daily bread. We allow scripture to come alongside us and encourage and challenge us. To be grateful. To start the day right. To count our blessings so that we might say with David, praise the Lord O my soul.

And forget not all his benefits. Amen.