Handling criticism is always tricky – not making either of those two mistakes – namely becoming defensive and returning the criticism, or letting it destroy your mood.  Two good examples I can across the other day are a pastor who one day received a one-word letter from an anonymous church member – the one word was ‘Fool’.  So the next Sunday the pastor announced, "I've received many notes without signatures before but this is the first time I’ve received one where someone forgot to write the note and just signed his name!"  The other example is by Winston Churchill, who was attending a formal occasion, during his last year as Prime Minister.  A few rows behind him two men began whispering. "That's Winston Churchill." "They say he is getting senile." "They say he should step aside and leave the running of the nation to more dynamic and capable men."  Churchill turned and said, "Gentlemen, they also say he is deaf!" 

Criticism is hard to take, and it’s also easier to give than the alternative – praise.  It’s also harder to give thanks than it is to complain.  Yet, in today’s Psalm the writer, King David, whom we know had regular reason to complain and criticize, chooses instead to celebrate God’s love and thank him for his gifts.  There are fifteen individual hymns of thanksgiving in the book of Psalms, and this is one of them.  Now the great thing about the psalms is that they were often written in response to real-life events - a national disaster, a personal trial or tragedy, or something good that has happened – a healing, a military victory, an escape from danger.  And here David celebrates the fact that he has escaped from his political enemies.  He says, “I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall always be on my lips.  Magnify the Lord with me.  I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.   This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”  He also invites his hearers to put God to the test.  If they are in any doubt about God’s goodness then they should “taste and see that the Lord id good.”

Our society seems more at home with negativity than celebration.  The results, though, are serious.  Not only do we overlook the extraordinary blessings of God but negativity makes us miserable.  I’ve read that as much as 77% of everything we think is negative and counterproductive and works against us. People who grow up in an average household hear "No" or are told what they “can't” more than 148,000 times by the time they reach age 18.  And I’m not having a go at parents, when I say this.  There are fewer tasks as difficult as being a parent.  It’s as if everything around us conspires to make it harder than it already is.  The result is that by the time children become adults they are programmed to believe the worst, to spot the bad thing, to grumble.  The wonder has been sucked out of them.

A city in the Netherlands tried a more positive programming of its residents.  They had a problem with litter. The sanitation department tried imposing heavy fines on people who littered, and they employed litter agents to catch offenders, but to no avail. Then someone suggested that instead of punishing those who littered, they could reward people who put garbage in trash cans. So they tried to not so much deter people from doing wrong, but encourage then to do right.  And they developed a trash can that played a recording of a joke when garbage was deposited.  Different garbage bins played different kinds of jokes, and the recordings were changed every two weeks. So people went out of their way to put rubbish in the bins so they could hear the joke. 

So maybe God wants to grow in us grateful hearts and positive minds.  It is I think, a gift, but it’s one God wants to give us.  And like many of his gifts he gives us it bit by bit, and not all in one go.  And he gives us it as we actually do it.  The more disciplined we are in giving thanks the easier we will find it.  The more we look for the good in people and in our circumstances the more we will notice it.  The more we spot God at work around us the clearer we will see his presence in places we don’t expect.

Now, I asked myself the question, “Why are we in the West so reluctant to be thankful?”  When you consider all we have, you’d think that we’d be more ready and able to thank God than any other people at any time in history.  My suspicion is that it is the fact that we are so blessed that makes it so hard for us to spot God’s blessing.  It’s like the little fish in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has heard about water and he is so excited by the prospect of finding water, and he swims around in this deep ocean asking every other fish, “Do you know where I can find water?  I’ve heard it’s so good and refreshing and it would make me so happy?”  We’re so surrounded by God’s blessings that maybe we don’t even notice them.  We only notice them when we lose them.

Perhaps it is when everything else is stripped away that we can be truly thankful for what God has given us.  Most Westerners are pretty spoiled materially, and in terms of education and healthcare.  And there's that fallen, ugly part of human nature that is quick to complain.  In other times, and today in other places, people used that energy to seek the things they need to stay alive or secure political freedoms or achieve an education.  And when we have all the things we need then the focus of that  dissatisfaction turns to trivia.  So instead of craving the necessities of life, which is what 3 billion people in the developing world still, do, we pursue trivia and luxury.  We have enough food, we have shelter, we have everything necessary for life - in abundance.  But human beings are still basically searching for something bigger, namely God.  So unless we find God we Western people still have the yearnings, but we focus them in other directions. 

So our deep search seems to be for entertainment - something that will make us happy for a while and take our minds off our unhappiness.  For a nicer home with greater comforts.  For thrilling experiences to make us feel that life is worth living. 

And yet all the evidence in study after study says that we Western people are just as unhappy now as we were centuries ago.  Even though every one of us has material riches that people living at the start of the Twentieth Century could not have even imagined.  And the reasons for our unhappiness, despite our wealth are two.  First we are discovering that material possessions and the experiences that money can buy cannot satisfy the human heart.  And second that human beings are very bad at focusing on what we have and are excellent at focusing on what we don’t have.  Nearly every man, woman and child in our Western world has enough of the essentials for living but each of us look around us at what some other people have, or what we see in the stores that we can't afford, and we focus on that instead of what we do have.  And the only possible result is unhappiness.  I may have a comfortable sofa, for example, but if I see a flyer for Art Van and there are pictures of even nicer sofas than mine, then, unless I'm spiritually strong, I can start to feel unhappy because I only have my sofa and not the other one.  And you can replace the word 'sofa' with anything you like.  Cable package, bathroom, car, job, even relationships or physical health.  I may have already lived longer than the human life expectancy in many parts of Africa, but that's not enough for me.  I may already have better health than many men of my age in the US, but again that's not enough.  I see the drugs advertised on TV and the products that make me think that I can feel even better than I do now, and I lose sight of how God has blessed me and focus on how he has not blessed me. 

Do you see what I mean?  I do not thank him for what he's given me but complain about what he has not given me.  So someone has a nicer sofa than mine.  I still have a good, comfortable sofa.  So someone has better health than me, I'm still reasonably fit and healthy.  But those aren't the things I focus on.  I focus on what I don't have, I ruminate on what is wrong with my circumstances, I search for a life free from suffering and loss instead of living contentedly with God's provision. 

In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?" 

The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you."  The man in dumb-founded, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week." 

A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before.  "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." 

The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week." 

A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute now that there's no goat -- only the nine of us." 

And the more I think about this the more I think that this is the real tragedy of human nature.  Our hearts are made for God, and they are restless until they find God.  So, no matter what we pursue to try to take away the yearning it will never work.  When people go into bad debt to try to buy contentment or when they leave a relationship and enter a new one to try to find love and happiness, or when they take up a hobby they think will entertain and satisfy them, or when they seek out new experiences or sensations they think will do the trick, what we are really doing is looking for God.  Looking for God in the wrong places; but it is God we're seeking.  I call it the search for Eden.  That nagging knowledge deep down in our hearts that there is something better than all this.  There’s this ancient memory, if you will, a half-memory that we were created for something better, something more, and that we need to go looking for it.  We were made to walk with God.  We long to get back to that life of intimacy with God.  Now if you asked the average shopper in the mall what they looking for today they wouldn’t probably say “God’, but he is what they’re after.  He is the yearning that keeps us awake at night, and that forces us to spend beyond our means.  What we're looking for is God. 

Now the bad news is that we will probably never outgrow that yearning.  We were made for heaven.  And I don’t think we will ever be truly happy until we get there.  There will always be that sense that things just aren’t the way they should be.  Life should be different.  So maybe there’s a little secret here that we could learn.  When we experience the yearning recognise that what you really hunger for is God.  You may experience that hunger and you think – making a purchase, eating that meal, enjoying that piece of entertainment, having that wonderful experience, making that trip, even seeing that person - these things will satisfy the hunger.  Well, they might, for a few minutes, or hours, or even days.  But your true hunger is for heaven.  We can’t find it in this material world.  The perfection we seek is a ways off yet.  But we can find God in part now.  We can get to know him a bit.  And we can look at all he has given us with a heart of gratitude and see all he has made in a positive light.