You are listening to a radio show. At its close, the host says “thank you” to a guest for making the time and effort to join them on the program. The guest replies, “No, thank you.”
A person in front of you at a store’s payment counter just made a purchase. The sales clerk hands them the receipt and says “thank you for shopping with us;” the customer replies “thank you.”
You are picking up your child from a friend’s wonderful birthday party where all the guests were treated to a big day at a water park. You make sure your child thanks her friend’s parents for the event. The parent replies, “Thank you for coming.”
Huh? I’ve noticed that there is a lot of polite two-way “thanking” going on these days, but I’m left wondering when the phrase, “You’re welcome” fell out of fashion. I rarely hear it anymore.
Why in the world is that? Has our society become so overwhelmingly grateful? Is there a glut of appreciation for “the privilege” of being able to spend one’s hard earned dollars at a retailer? Is everyone doing everyone else reciprocal favors? “Thank you” – “No, thank you!”
Seems fishy to me. If it is anything more than a thoughtless response, it appears to be a rejection of someone’s gratitude. Like we don’t know what to do with it.* Or it’s a cloak of faux-humility that, when you stop to think about it, rings hollow. And false humility would be, well, a weird form of an oh-so-subtly disguised pride. Uh-oh. This post just got spiritual.
Try to imagine Jesus, after being thanked by a freshly healed person, responding with “Oh no, really, thank you – it was My privilege to heal you.” See what I mean? How much richer is it to picture Jesus’ far more likely response of a big smile and a warmly said, “You are welcome, friend.”
Maybe we just don’t know how to accept gratitude. Our gracious Maker welcomes our thanks. He knows it’s helpful for us to say it. It pleases him to receive it. It is the presence of grace. Any time we express our “thank you” to God, we should know it is met with a resounding, “You’re welcome” baked into the fabric of creation. It is a truly gracious and humble person who can say to another “You are welcome” and plainly mean it. And it’s a more God’s-kingdom-like world where “welcome-ness” is abundant alongside thanksgiving.
be God’s,
Owen
* see also phrases we say such as: no problem; it was nothing; no worries; don’t mention it, and the like… Chick-fil-A gets credit for “It’s my pleasure.”