Thankfulness and Gratitude

Hands holding a cup that says, "Thankful"

I’ve been meaning to look up the difference between thankfulness and gratitude for some time now. The other day, however, I stumbled across the information in a book called Up, Down, or Sideways by Mark Sanborn. In chapter 10, he explains that thankfulness is what you feel when someone does something nice for you or gives you something you need or want. Gratitude is your response to that feeling.

So, when someone pays you a compliment, you feel thankful and show your gratitude by saying, “Thank you.” When someone brings you a meal because you’ve been sick, you feel thankful and show your gratitude by writing a thank-you note or returning their dish with a home-baked treat. Other responses to feeling thankful include holding someone in higher esteem, returning the favor, or paying the action forward. John said, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11, NIV). We are thankful for God’s love, and so we show love to each other.

Technically, Thanksgiving is a day for showing gratitude; we feel thankful, so we give thanks. Maybe this is why the words seem interchangeable even though they’re slightly different. Feeling thankful when people are kind and generous is important. Responding to that feeling with gratitude in any form shows people how you feel, allows the feeling to linger in your heart, and helps those to whom you offered gratitude to feel thankfulness, too. Our thankfulness is complete when we offer a gracious response.

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Work Cited

Sanborn, Mark. Up, Down, and Sideways. Tyndale House Publishers, 2011.

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Photo by Ina Ramos on Unsplash

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