Prayers of thanks and praise
For the good news, the ordinary Tuesday, and the thing you nearly forgot to say thank you for.
Something went right. The letter came, the results were clear, the person you were worried about answered the phone sounding like themselves again. Or nothing went right and nothing went wrong, which is its own thing worth noticing.
Thanks is harder to say than it looks. Relief moves straight on to the next worry, and by Friday the good news has become background. If you are here weeks late, having only just remembered, that is a normal way to arrive.
The short prayers come first, because that is probably what you came for. Say the one that fits and close the page. The Bible passages are underneath, with what they meant when they were written, if you want to know where any of this comes from.
17 prayers on this page, and 8 Bible passages with notes on what they mean.
When the good news lands
The call ended a minute ago and you are still standing in the hallway. Nothing is organised yet. These are for the first few minutes, before you have told anyone.
The first thing to say
God, it is good news. Thank you. I will say more later. For now, thank you.
Before I tell anyone else
Before I ring my mum, before I put it anywhere, I want you to have it first. This is the thing I asked you for, and here it is. I do not know how much of it was you. I am thanking you anyway.
When relief arrives shaking
My hands are shaking and I cannot tell whether that is joy or the last four weeks leaving my body. Thank you for the answer. Thank you for staying near while I waited for it, even the nights I said nothing to you at all.
Keep me from forgetting this
Lord, I know myself. By next month this will be a fact I mention in passing. Fix it somewhere in me. When the next hard thing comes, let me remember that this one turned out like this.
For an ordinary Tuesday
Nothing happened today. No news, no crisis, the washing is on. These are for the days that will not make it into anyone’s story, which is most of them.
For a day with nothing in it
Thank you for an uneventful day. The kettle, the walk to the car, the person who let me out at the junction. Nobody was ill. Nothing arrived in the post that I dreaded. I would like to notice that before it slips past.
At the end of the washing up
God, that was a decent day. Thank you.
For food on the table
Someone grew this, and someone paid for it. Thank you for both of them, and thank you that there is enough today. Make me somebody who notices that, and somebody who shares it.
For work that is only work
A dull job. A colleague who is kind for no particular reason. Getting home. It is not the life I imagined at twenty, and it is steadier than I feared. Thank you.
Thankful and grieving at once
Your scan was clear and the woman beside you was crying. Or the good news came a year too late for someone you loved. Both things are true, and you are allowed to say both.
Relieved and wrecked at once
God, I am relieved and I am wrecked, and I do not know how to hold the two. Thank you for what you have given me. I am not ready to be cheerful about it. Sit here with me until I am.
For the one who got other news
I got the answer she wanted. I do not understand why it went this way round. Thank you anyway, and please be with her tonight, closer than you are with me if that can be done.
Thanks, and I am still asking
You have my thanks. You also have my questions, and I am not withdrawing them. Thank you for the good thing. I still want to know about the other one. I am going to keep asking.
When you remember months later
You asked for something, you got it, and life closed over the top. Now it is October and you still have not said anything. Turning back late is still turning back.
Late, but saying it now
I never said thank you. I am saying it now.
A prayer answered last winter
That thing I begged you for last winter. It happened, and I went straight on to the next worry without a word. Thank you. Late, and meant. I would like to be someone who comes back.
Going back over the year
God, let me go back over this year with you. The parts I would rather skip as well. Show me where you were when I was not looking, and I will thank you for what I find, and ask you about the rest.
Thanking God for a person
For the person who drove you to the appointment, the nurse whose name you never got, the one who has put up with you for thirty years.
For the one who stayed
The texts that did not need answering. The bin she took out without being asked. Thank you for her. I have never told her what it meant. Help me tell her. Thank you for putting her near me.
For the people who looked after me
The doctor who explained it twice. The receptionist who found a cancellation. They did their job well while I was frightened. Thank you for them. Bless them tonight, whatever they are going home to.
At a table with people
Thank you for this table and everyone round it, including the ones who are hard work. We have food, we have each other, and we have today. Thank you.
Bible verses about gratitude and praise
What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.
Weren’t the ten cleansed? But where are the nine?
Luke 17:11–19
Nine did exactly what Jesus told them to do, which was go to the priests. The story gets used to make people feel bad about not being grateful enough, which turns thanks into one more duty to fail at. Notice instead who came back. He was a Samaritan, an outsider with no standing in that crowd. Jesus sends him off with the line “Your faith has healed you”, and that sentence has since been used to tell people who are still ill that their faith must have fallen short. It is said to one man about what has already happened to him, not laid down as a measure of anybody else. The passage itself refuses that reading: all ten were cleansed on the road, the nine included, before any of them had turned back. Gratitude is not a debt collected. It is what happens when someone takes in what has happened to them.
In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus towards you.
1 Thessalonians 5:16–18
This is the verse most often quoted at people in the worst week of their lives. Read what it actually says. In everything, not for everything. It sits in a run of short instructions to a small church under real pressure, and it is not a command to be pleased about a bereavement. Thanks alongside the trouble, not thanks instead of naming the trouble.
In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Philippians 4:4–7
Thanksgiving here is not a mood you have to work up. It is something you do while you are still asking for what you need, and the request and the thanks go up in the same sentence. The line is often used to tell anxious people to stop being anxious, which nobody can do to order. What it offers is somewhere to put the anxiety.
Praise the LORD, my soul, and don’t forget all his benefits
Where these verses get misused
Gratitude gets used as a lid. You will be told to count your blessings when what you needed was for someone to sit down and listen. Verses about thanks in everything get quoted at people in the first week of a bereavement, and they land as an instruction to stop making other people uncomfortable. Thanks does not cancel grief, and it does not require you to say the loss was worth it. You can be genuinely thankful for the good news and still furious about the rest. Both go in the same prayer if you want.
Questions people ask
- Does it count if I do not feel grateful?
- Yes. Feeling is not the qualification. Say the words, mean them as far as you can, and let the feeling come or not come. Plenty of the thanksgiving psalms read like people talking themselves into it, repeating one line until it steadies them. If you are numb after a long stretch of worry, that is exhaustion, not ingratitude. Thanks said flatly is still thanks.
- How do I thank God when it was the doctors who did it?
- You can thank both, and most people do. Naming a surgeon’s skill takes nothing away from God, and thanking God is not a claim that the medicine was incidental. If you are unsure how much was answered prayer and how much was a good hospital, put that uncertainty in the prayer itself. It is better company than a certainty you do not have. Keep going to your appointments either way.
- Is it wrong to celebrate when someone else is still waiting?
- No, though the discomfort you feel is real and worth respecting. Your good news was not taken from anyone else’s supply. What helps is holding both: thank God for what came, then pray for the person still waiting, by name. Be careful how you tell them. Loud relief in front of someone who got the other answer is hard to hear, however kindly it is meant.
- What does giving thanks in everything actually ask of me?
- It asks you to keep talking to God in the middle of things. It does not ask you to describe the worst event of your life as a blessing. The words are in everything, not for everything. Nobody is required to be thankful that a marriage ended or a diagnosis came. You can hold a thanksgiving and a complaint in the same breath, and the Psalms do it constantly.
One thing, and then close the page. Think of the most recent good thing, however small, that you have not said anything about. The lift that turned up. The result. Say thank you for that one out loud, in whatever words arrive. It does not need to be tidy, and it does not need to be long.