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Giving Thanks When It Hurts | Ebie Hepworth
September 29, 2026 · 7 min
Honest gratitude that does not deny suffering but invites God into the hurt and trusts him to make all things new.
Series How to Hold on to Hope with Ebie Hepworth
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In this video 0:00 Thanksgiving in the Dark2:44 Passover: Thanks Before Deliverance5:08 Jesus' Eucharisto in Darkness
Thanksgiving in the Dark 0:00 Welcome back to this pray dot com series from Kingdom Voices brought to you by W publishing. If this devotional from E. B. Hepworth encourages you today, you can find more in her new book, Midnight Hallelujah,0:12 why hope is still worth the risk.0:15 I wonder if you know this place too, the space between what you prayed for and what arrived. Perhaps you've stood at your own porch opening a door to something that looks like limitation.0:27 Maybe it was the divorce you never asked for, the phone that stayed silent when you ached to hear your child's voice, the dementia that stole the mind of someone you love. It could0:39 be that you've opened your door to something uninvited and wonder how to lift your hands when your heart is breaking, how to give thanks when what's been delivered feels more like a loss than a0:51 gift, when the story sitting on your doorstep looks nothing like the 1 you imagined. Brennan Manning once described this posture as a doxology whispered in the1:02 dark. A giving of thanks offered not from relief, but from interior desolation. A trust in the love of God even when life feels cruel, ordinary, and painfully1:15 unresolved. And what I have come to learn is that the giving of thanks does not box out the gut wrenching sting. Rather, it invites God into it. It's not the closing of our1:26 eyes to what hurts. It's the opening of our hearts to what's still holy. It's the language that reminds the weary heart that God isn't done yet. But hear me clearly. I'm1:38 not giving thanks for the thing that's causing pain. I'm giving thanks to the God who makes all things new and restores every breaking thing. This isn't denial
1:50 or forced optimism. It's resurrection shaped hope, The kind that believes that God can bring life out of what still looks like loss and beauty out of what has not yet been
2:02 healed. To give thanks when we don't feel thankful is not hypocrisy. It is holiness. For in these moments, we are trusting that God is still
2:14 himself even when we are not. We are confessing that his goodness is not dependent on our gladness. It is here where we discover that thanksgiving
2:26 does not require a light heart, only an honest 1. And perhaps in time, the giving thanks when it stings will not only deliver us from our mixed devotion,
2:38 but will lead us to promised lands beyond our wildest imaginations. The 1st time scripture ever mentions midnight is also a moment when others opened their doors to something
Passover: Thanks Before Deliverance
2:50 unexpected. It's the moment when God began to deliver his people out of Egypt. For more than 400 years, the Israelites had waited in slavery, generations born and buried
3:02 under Pharaoh's rule. I imagine their prayers felt like echoes swallowed by heaven by that point. And yet, when God finally spoke again, it wasn't in the daylight of clarity,
3:14 but in the darkness of midnight. He gave Moses a command for each Israelite family to find a spotless lamb, to sacrifice it, and to mark their doorpost with its blood, a
3:25 declaration that they belonged to the God who still keeps his word. Then they were told to eat bread without yeast, put shoes on their feet, and be ready to leave when the word came.
3:37 This moment, this meal would become what scripture calls the Passover, Exodus chapter 12 verse 11. It was an act of remembrance, a table of trust set in the
3:49 middle of oppression. Every bite, every mark of blood, every quiet prayer whispered over that meal was a way of saying, God will do what only he can
4:01 do. That's the detail I so often miss. The 1st Passover meal, the birth of Thanksgiving, happened at midnight while they were still
4:12 slaves. The smell of lamb roasting, the flicker of firelight on the wooden walls, the proverbial sound of chains clinking as wrists lifted bread to mouths.
4:24 They weren't free yet. They were still in Egypt. Their thanksgiving came before liberation. Their worship came before the seas split. The
4:36 1st act of deliverance wasn't walking out of Egypt. It was giving thanks in it. And centuries later, another table was set, another lamb prepared, another night
4:48 thick with darkness. In an upper room, the same God who had passed over their homes now knelt among his friends, holding bread in his hands. This time,
5:00 the doorposts were not smeared with blood. Rather, the cross would bear it all. In front of them, the same Passover meal, lamb roasted over open flame, bitter
Jesus' Eucharisto in Darkness
5:12 herbs and saltwater, unleavened bread stacked in rough baskets, cups of wine ready to be poured. The disciples murmured, still confused, still clinging to their
5:24 ideas of what freedom should look like. But Jesus knew. He took the bread, ordinary, breakable, the same kind he'd eaten since childhood, and
5:36 held it in his hands. His eyes lifted. And before the betrayal, before the arrest, before the whip, and the nails, and the silence of Saturday, he gave thanks.
5:48 Eucharisto. Thank you. He gave thanks for what he was about to endure. He gave thanks knowing the sacrifice. He gave thanks knowing the cost
6:00 that had to be paid. Then he broke the bread. Can you imagine it? The lamb of God sitting in the room with them, giving thanks over his own sacrifice.
6:12 The wine followed, pouring like a promise. This is my blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Verse 28, NIV. The cup that
6:24 once reminded them of deliverance from Egypt now became the symbol of deliverance from sin. And so the story comes full circle. The lamb whose blood
6:35 covered doorposts to protect life and the lamb whose blood would cover hearts to redeem them. Both nights heavy with darkness and both at a table of thanksgiving.
6:48 This is the richness of sacrificial thanksgiving. The kind that costs something. The kind that thanks God not after the miracle, but through the ache.
7:00 Deliverance does not begin with relief, but with a response, with a decision to give an offering to God not after the pain passes, but while it still presses in.
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