Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!
Give thanks because he is good — this verse ties gratitude to a claim about character, not to circumstances. It doesn't say give thanks because the year went well. It says give thanks because of who God is, a statement meant to hold regardless of how the last twelve months actually went for you.
That's a harder kind of gratitude than the easy version, the one that only shows up when things are going your way. This is gratitude offered as a conviction about something steady, even in a year that wasn't.
You don't have to fake feeling thankful for everything that happened this year to sit with this verse honestly. It's not asking you to be grateful for the hard parts. It's pointing at something underneath all of it that it claims never stopped being good, whether the year agreed or not.
As the year closes, it might be worth asking what you'd actually find if you looked for something good underneath the hard parts.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.