God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6-7

In Christ, we've got it good. Our past is paid for, and our future is guaranteed, secured in heaven by the promise of God Himself. Eugene Peterson closes his book A LONG OBEDIENCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION with a call to gratitude:

"Charis always demands the answer eucharistia (that is, grace always demands the answer of gratitude). Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth." Karl Barth

"Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning."

"God is personal reality to be enjoyed."

"We are so created and so redeemed that we are capable of enjoying him. All the movements of discipleship arrive at a place where joy is experienced."

"Every step of assent toward God develops the capacity to enjoy. Not only is there, increasingly, more to be enjoyed, there is steadily the acquired ability to enjoy it. Best of all, we don't have to wait until we get to the end of the road before we enjoy what is at the end of the road. So, 'Come, bless the Lord...the Lord bless you!'"

May it be our blessedness, as years go on, to add one grace to another, and advance upward, step by step, neither neglecting the lower after attaining the higher, nor aiming at the higher before attaining the lower.

The first grace is faith, the last is love;
first comes zeal, afterwards comes loving-kindness;
first comes humiliation, then comes peace;
first comes diligence, then comes resignation.

May we learn to mature all graces in us;
fearing and trembling,
watching and repenting, because Christ is coming;
joyful, thankful, and careless of the future, because he is come." John Henry Neuman

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.; give thanks to him and bless his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

If murmuring were a duty, some saints would never sin, and if mourning were commanded by God they would certainly be saved by works, for they are always sorrowing, and so they would keep his law. 

Many of the saints of God are as mournful as if they were captives in Babylon, for their life is spent in tears and sighing. They will not chant the joyous psalm of praise, and if there be any that require of them a song, they reply, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

But, my brethren, we are not captives in Babylon; we do not sit down to weep by Babel's streams; "the Lord has broken our captivity, he has brought us up out of the house of our bondage. We are freemen; we are not slaves; we are not sold into the hand of cruel taskmasters, but we that have believed do enter into rest:"

Moses could not give rest to Israel; he could bring them to Jordan, but across the stream he could not conduct them; Joshua alone could lead them into the lot of their inheritance, and our Joshua, our Jesus, has led us into the land of promise.

He has brought us into a land which the Lord our God thinks on; a land of hills and valleys; a land that flows with milk and honey; and though the Canaanites still be in the land, and plague us full sore, yet is it all our own, and he has said to us:

"All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's:" 1 Corinthians 3:21-23.

We are not, I say, captives, sold under sin; we are a people who sit every man under his own vine and his own fig-tree, none making us afraid. We dwell in "a strong city, salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks:"

We have come unto Zion, the city of our solemnities, and the mourning of Babylon is not suitable to the palace of the great King, which is beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.

"Let us serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with singing:" Psalm 100:2.

Many of God's people live as if their God were dead.

Their conduct would be quite consistent....

if the promises were not yea and amen;
if God were a faithless God.
If Christ were not a perfect Redeemer;
if the Word of God might after all turn out to be untrue;
if he had not power to keep his people, and
if he had not love enough with which to hold them even to the end...

then might they give way to mourning and to despair; then might they cover their heads with ashes, and wrap their loins about with sackcloth.

But while God is Jehovah, just and true;
while his promises stand as fast as the eternal mountians;
while the heart of Jesus is true to his spouse;
while the arm of God is unpalsied, and his eye undimmed;
while his covenant and his oath are unbroken and unchanged....

it is not comely, it is not seemly for the upright to go mourning all their days.

Children of God, refrain yourselves from weeping, and make a joyful noise unto the Rock of your salvation; let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

C. H. Spurgeon MAGNIFICAT