The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me (Psalm 50:23).

We all have our easy definitions of how we please God. And most of our definitions for pleasing God end up displeasing God in one way or another. This is what it means to be religious. We want to know exactly we must DO for God to get Him to accept us, bless us, or for most of us, keep Him at an arm’s length.

This is the critique God gives Israel in Psalm 50. They were great at offering bulls and goats for sacrifice. But that made their sacrifices about what they thought God wanted instead of what they needed. God asks them, “Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” “If I were hungry would I tell you? (Implication: I don’t need your sacrifices to be satisfied).

But God is not in need, we are. And our need, deep down, is thanksgiving for God’s action, on our behalf, in every circumstance. Thanksgiving is about being a recipient, not a giver. Thanksgiving is the acknowledgment of getting something good from another.

Think of what this means for our disappointment. Disappointment is the feeling arising from not receiving a good thing that we thought we would receive. Instead our hearts break in the gap between the-good-we-thought-we-needed and our reality. Disappointment is also fueled from our religious thinking that says, “we have done what God has required of us, we should receive something good.” But thanksgiving is what is required, not the religious performance.

Thanksgiving is the ointment that begins to heal the wound of your disappointment. In thanksgiving, we acknowledge that a good God is directing our life and circumstance. The gap between our definition of good and our reality is closed by thanksgiving; thanksgiving says that we are RECEIVING something from God that is He is working for GOOD, even if it is a bitter providence.

This, of course, requires faith — a faith that looks to the One who received a bitter providence from God for us. We don’t need more faith to get through the disappointment — we rest in the Faithful one who received evil, so we can receive good from the hands of God forever.