The Difficulty of Thanking God

I've been having some trouble lately.

I've been using a new prayer form as of late, the PenteCOST prayer. I think I've described this before, but in case not, here's how it works: For the first five letters of the word, you focus on five things to
P(ente)raise God for, then you
Confess, then you pray for
Others, then for your
Self, and then you finish with
Thanksgiving.

What's been complicated has been making a distinction between Praise and Thanksgiving. I'm not even sure why I want to make one, but I do. And what I've come up with is that the Praise section should take me out beyond myself. Praise should involve praising God for things directly about God, not just things that are nice in my own life. Things like the beauty of creation and the grace that makes all human interactions more bearable than they would be otherwise. The Thanksgiving section then, can be more about personal blessings, like my wonderful congregation or the house that I love living in.

The problem I'm having lately is with the personal blessing thing. I read fairly frequently about people talking about how blessed they are. They have a great life, a great spouse, a great job, great kids, great opportunities, etc. And that's great for them.

But how does God work into that? It's hard for me to work out how God specifically blessed them with all those great things, when other people's lives are so crappy.

Part of the problem here is that I've never quite worked out how I relate God's work in the world with the idea of luck. I'm a pretty firm believer in luck, and I'm not even sure I know what I mean when I say that. It's not that I believe in Luck as a force in the world. It's more that it seems like a very good description of the way the world works. Some people have good luck, as evidenced by good things happening to them. Some people have bad luck, as evidenced by bad things happening to them. Some people's luck changes. I don't really connect with the idea of luck as a superstition so much, as an assessment of the reality that life is not fair.

And quite frankly, when people start to list all their blessings, knowing as I do that a lot of other people have not received those blessings, the whole thing starts to bump into my conception of luck. And it seems a little weird to thank God for good luck. It's almost like the prayer of the Pharisee "I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men..."

On the other hand, I do believe that cultivating a spirit of gratitude for everything in life is an important spiritual goal. So being grateful to God for whatever good thing, big or small, makes sense for that reason. Maybe it's the public nature of it that is really what bothers me. Thanking God for everything, big, little, random or worked-hard-for, in private is one thing. Listing those blessings out loud seems more like showing off.

Anyway, I am still thanking God. I just try to be careful about it, and not say things I don't mean. And some day, maybe God will explain the luck thing to me.