All Is Grace

Cosmic Gratitude and the Christian Life

Gratitude is consistently correlated with greater well-being in the psychological literature. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, people who cultivate gratitude tend to experience lower levels of anxiety and depression, greater emotional resilience, and a deeper sense of meaning in life.

Much of this research focuses upon interpersonal gratitude. We thank people. We recognize the gifts given to us by others. We acknowledge our dependence. Interpersonal gratitude is concrete, relational, and morally formative. Interpersonal gratitude binds us together.

But gratitude is not confined to the social.

Where do I direct my thanks for a sunset? For the breath in my lungs? For the simple fact of existence itself?

Psychologists sometimes describe this less well studied phenomenon as cosmic or existential gratitude. Cosmic gratitude is the recognition that all is gift.

I think you can make a strong argument that the emotional core of the Christian faith is this experience of cosmic gratitude. That everything is grace. In Acts 17:25, God is described as the one who gives “life and breath and everything.” In Psalm 104, the entire ecology of existence is portrayed as continuous divine provision, where life is sustained moment by moment as gift.

Paul asks at one point in his letters, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Nothing is self-originating. Everything is received.

Gratitude, therefore, becomes a mode of existence. A way of being in the world. A posture of recognition. “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). “Always and for everything giving thanks” (Ephesians 5:20).

All is gift.

Everything is grace.