My mom loved oranges. We all did.

Every Saturday morning my dad would wake me up early, and we’d head out to the morning produce market near Santee and Maple in downtown LA. There, we’d go to buy our supply of fruit. Mostly, it was oranges. The Sunkists had thicker rinds, were easier to peel, and more expensive. The Californias were smaller, harder to peel, but juicier, and cheaper. They were about $3 per box sometimes. We’d always get several boxes of the Californias.

Then, when we got home, our entire family would sit down to feast on the oranges. As recent immigrants, this was a real treat. Mom would grab the big cutting board, and we’d just slice them into about half-inch cross sections, open them up, and go at it. This is the best way to eat juicy oranges fast. My mom would go through about 10 oranges.

But I did not tell you all this to tell you about oranges, how much they were in the mid- 70s, and how many my mom could eat in one sitting. I told you all this to tell you this next thing, which is that in the middle of eating the oranges my mom would burst out thanking America. “Thank you America!” is what she would say to no one in particular, which, of course, makes sense, since it was America she was thanking, and America was everywhere around us. She would do this on a regular basis, not only when we were eating oranges, but when she got her driver’s license, or when I got into college and received plenty of grant money to help with the costs. She would regularly break out in direct address to America, thanking America for being such a generous and kind country. She would occasionally also mix in “I luh-bu America!”

This would embarass the Kang kids, who were rapidly getting proficient in English, and, with it, sophistication (we thought) and a sense that we belong here, and there’s no call for thanking America which is just simply our country. Besides, for me, the illogical aspect of her outbursts of joyful gratitude bothered me. I mean, America did not intend to give us cheap oranges, which back in the old country we would get only if we were really sick. America is just this big and plentiful country, and there’s nothing personal about America’s granting college admission to a son of an immigrant family, and helping to pay for his tuition.

But my mom took it personally. For her it did not matter if America just was the land of plenty; that America never actually personally intended for her to get all these oranges on the cheap, or that any applicant that qualifies—not just her son--gets the funds. She found these factors quite beside the point.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate my mom’s style of gratitude. I guess the thing that’s admirable about her gratitude is that she chose to be thankful regardless of whether it was specially meant for her. Often we do not feel very grateful toward things that people get in the normal course of life. The sun, clean water, freedom from plagues, relative safety, cheap oranges. Just having the Bible there for us to read any time we choose to. People who put up with us. A church to belong to. For many of us, we feel grateful based not on what we receive, but on whether the giver “meant it just for me, and me only.” It seems that only when we are singled out, when our egos get stroked with the message “you are special,” that we experience an emotional connection sufficient to feel thankful. But this leaves out so much of life; this misses so much of our God’s goodness to us.

But unlike “America,” God is a real Person and delights in our gratitude joyfully offered to him for all his bounty to us. It would be entirely appropriate for us to burst out “Thank you God!” for cheap oranges, for people to love, and, with the way we all used to drive, for just being alive and in one piece.

Psalm 100:3-4, "Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name."