How to Give Thanks in Hard Times

The short answer: The Bible roots gratitude in who God is, not in what is happening around us. Psalm 107 opens with "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever" (Psalm 107:1, NIV) before it names a single circumstance. Because God's goodness does not change with the season, Christians can give thanks in hard times by starting with His character, telling others what He has done, and practicing gratitude every day so the habit is already in place when hard days come.

"Now Thank We All Our God" has been sung for centuries, and its words are so familiar that many people have forgotten the story behind them. It sounds like a song written in a season of plenty: a full table, a warm fire, a barn overflowing with the harvest. The man who wrote it was surrounded by graves.

Martin Rinkart was a Lutheran pastor in Eilenburg, Saxony, during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The walled town became a refuge for thousands of people fleeing the fighting, and with them came disease and famine. In the plague year of 1637, one of the town's other pastors left and the other two died, leaving Rinkart as the only minister. He conducted more than 4,000 funerals that year, sometimes as many as 50 in a day. One of those graves belonged to his own wife.

During those years, Rinkart wrote a simple prayer for his children to say at the dinner table. Its opening lines thank God for blessing His people from their earliest days "with countless gifts of love" that still remain. It was a table grace written by a man who knew loss up close, and it has outlasted the war, the plague, and the grief around it by nearly 400 years.
That is what real praise looks like. And it raises a question worth sitting with: what is praise, and where does it come from?

Psalm 107 opens with a declaration before it mentions a single circumstance: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever" (Psalm 107:1, NIV). The reason for praise comes first, and it is not the situation, the outcome, or the answered prayer. The reason is God Himself: His character and His steadfast, promise-keeping love.
This order matters. When praise depends on circumstances, it rises and falls with whatever is happening in a given week, season, or year. Good news comes and gratitude flows easily. Hard news arrives and we go quiet. That kind of praise is fragile. It cannot carry a person through the graveyard seasons of life, because it was never rooted in anything deeper than the moment.
Praise that begins with who God is can survive a plague year. It can be offered at a thin supper after a long day of funerals.

Psalm 107 does not stop at the declaration. It moves straight to an invitation: "Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story" (Psalm 107:2, NIV). This is not only for the especially bold or gifted. It is a call to everyone who has experienced God's redemption. If God has done something in your life, you are meant to say so.
The psalm then walks through four groups of people in trouble: wanderers lost in the desert (verses 4-9), prisoners sitting in darkness (verses 10-16), people brought low by their own rebellion (verses 17-22), and sailors caught in a storm at sea (verses 23-32). Their situations are different, but the pattern is the same every time. They cried out to the Lord, He delivered them, and the psalm calls them to give thanks for what He has done.
This pattern is still happening in ordinary lives and ordinary places. A woman goes to work on a Monday morning and collapses. Every test comes back clear, and doctors cannot find an explanation. She goes home knowing what happened: a school full of children prayed, a church prayed, and God answered. That is a story meant to be told.
When the redeemed share what God has done, faith is strengthened and hope is renewed. People in the middle of their own hard season are reminded that the same God who moved then can move again.

Psalm 107 ends quietly. After all the rescues, the psalmist closes with this: "Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord" (Psalm 107:43, NIV). The psalm does not end with a shout. It ends with an instruction to reflect and learn.
Gratitude is a muscle. In a broken world, it is not the default setting of the human heart. It has to be practiced and built into the rhythms of ordinary life, so that when the hard seasons arrive, the habit is already there.
Corrie ten Boom wrote about this from her time in a Nazi concentration camp. She and her sister Betsie were placed in a crowded barracks at Ravensbrück that was overrun with fleas. Betsie read 1 Thessalonians 5:18, which tells believers to give thanks in all circumstances, and insisted they thank God even for the fleas. Corrie found that hard to do. Over time, they noticed the guards would not come into their barracks, because of the fleas. That let the two sisters hold open Bible studies and share the gospel with dozens of women who had never heard it. The thing they hated most protected the work God was doing.
Gratitude built into ordinary days, such as a table grace, a prayer before a meal, or a habit of naming where every good thing comes from, is not a small act. It is preparation. It carries a person through the seasons they did not see coming.

Fall speaks of harvest, of seeing what all the plowing and planting and praying was for. But the harvest does not happen without the hard work of spring, the uncertainty of summer, and the storms and droughts in between. A full barn cannot be separated from a hard growing season.
Whatever season you are in right now, whether it feels like harvest or like a desert, like a full table or a graveyard, the invitation of Psalm 107 is the same. Cry out to the Lord. He still delivers. He still satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things (Psalm 107:9).
And when He does, tell someone. The redeemed of the Lord have something to say.