Category: Totally Hip Gratitude

Written by Jackson Ferrell

What Makes Us Tick – Psalm 136 [Totally Hip Gratitude]

The psalms repeat themselves. Psalms 118 and 136 begin with the same couplet, word-for-word: “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting” (118:1, 136:1). I could cite more psalms that feature the same line throughout themselves like a chorus or that borrow lines from other psalms like remixes, but I’d be repeating myself. And while Psalm 136 repeats its hook “For His lovingkindness is everlasting” in every single verse, the point of the psalm isn’t repetition. It’s gratitude.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

A Gift Worth Being Thankful For – Psalm 118 [Totally Hip Gratitude]

Here’s another psalm that uses the word “thanks” a lot, at least compared to other psalms, which tend to only use it once or not at all. In the NASB’s translation, it’s 460 words long, and “thanks” appears five times. That’s just slightly more than 1% of the words, but gratitude is central to Psalm 118, to the point that the NASB summarizes it with the header “Thanksgiving for the Lord’s Saving Goodness.” I expect we could learn something about our topic of choice here, so let’s dig into the text and find out what thanks is all about.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Opening Up a Thanksgiving Can – Psalm 9 [Totally Hip Gratitude]

Happy Thanksgiving, Chocolate Book fam. If I were smarter, I would have thought ahead and planned out a Totally Hip Gratitude post in keeping with the holiday. And I suppose it’s not too late to set Zechariah 10 aside, dig out my word search for “thanks,” pick a reference, and continue my study on gratitude. So why don’t I do that? Seriously, why don’t I do that? I’m going to do that.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Let’s Get Hebrew – Ezra 3:11 [Totally Hip Gratitude]

Ezra is a book about getting back in touch with your roots. Its events take place around 460-450 BC, generations after Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. King Cyrus of Persia sends a sizeable party of diaspora Jews to return to Jerusalem, reunite with the survivors, and build a new temple to their God in their holy city. And it would seem Ezra, who chronicled this expedition, took a few cues from the book of Chronicles, because when he uses the word “thanks,” he too pairs it with the word “praise.” In the scene from today’s passage, after the foundation for the temple is complete, the priests lead the Hebrew people in praise and thanks. All in all, it’s an extremely Hebrew scene, so let’s get Hebrew.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Praise and Thanks, Light and Hands – 1 and 2 Chronicles, Contd. [Totally Hip Gratitude]

As we progress through the Bible in our study of thankfulness whose stupid name is so stupid that I am not even going to mention it, we begin to see more instances of the word “thank,” especially in the two books of Chronicles. And the trend I observed in 1 Chronicles 16 continues throughout 1 and 2 Chronicles: wherever we see thankfulness, praise is not far behind. This may come as no surprise; after all, as Li’l Spicy said in his famous “Thanksgiving and Praise Are Like Our Right and Left Arms” speech, thanksgiving and praise are like our right and left arms. But why do they belong together so naturally? Let’s see if we can figure it out.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Expressing Ourselves – 1 Chronicles 16:1-36 [Totally Hip Gratitude]

We just finished another minor prophet, so today we flip back to trying to learn new things about gratitude, or at least to remember things about gratitude that we’ve forgotten or haven’t thought about in awhile. Here’s the scene: David has just come back from victory over the Philistines and brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. There, the citizens make offerings, David distributes food to them, and then Asaph the priest (who also wrote a bunch of the psalms) and his relatives offer thanks to God in the form of a psalm. Welcome back to another installment of our stupidly-named series Totally Hip Gratitude. I have made my bed, and now I must sleep in it. But what can we observe about this passage and what it shows us about thankfulness?