Every third Thursday of every November offers us here in 'merica the opportunity to reflect on the many blessings for which generations of our predecessors from pilgrims to post world war parents worked, fought and died. And it is a time to hear almost as many homilies on gratitude as pieces of pumpkin pie which we will slide into our salivating gullets. With good reason, as I will be the first to admit my ability to drift from thankfulness. I am guilty of ignoring a clear summer sky to fret about a crack in the sidewalk. While giving thanks is the natural, proper and joyful disposition of a creature of God and believer in Jesus Christ, it is one to which I am oft not easily disposed. One of the most heard admonitions at this time of year belongs to the apostle Paul when he instructs us in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances."
Many smarter and more eloquent folks than myself will undertake to present the rightness and needfulness of giving thanks this year. Check out Albert Mohler's take on the theological and historical underpinnings of Thanksgiving on his podcast, "The Briefing." Or you could read Brett Mckay's take on gratitude as a moral virtue on his blog. While I would like to know more about some some of the author's presuppositions forming the soil out of which his thoughts arise, I do love McKay's conclusions. "Gratitude is the grease in the gears of well doing, a fuel that sparks and animates ones courage, generosity, industry and honor." I can get with that. Content to let Mohler et al instruct us along these lines, I would instead invite you into the thicket of my own thoughts for a slightly different treatment of the subject to which I have been led this year.
I am full of pushbacks to Pauls simple instruction to rejoice and give thanks at all times. I entertain these "what abouts" in order to dig down to the heart of how he can say such a thing. Understand that I do this believing that if there is not a perfect obedience to his words in this life, then there has to be an upward trajectory of growing in thankfulness and joy that we can experience. Perhaps it is the result of a career in emergency medicine or having just begun reading the book of Job, or spending the last eighteen months talking about our experiences in Kenya that lead me to away strip externalities from the equation, performing a Thanksgiving reductio of sorts. "All circumstances" means sickness, pain, poverty, depression, struggle, you name it. "What about this circumstance? Should I be thankful now?" "All circumstances," says the one who was stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, acutely aware of his own misdeeds before Damascus and still able to sing hymns in prison.
Dr Mohler posits that thankfulness must be directed at a personal source and is tucked away in the heart of every human as a creature made by their Creator. He presents two categories of gratitude. "Proximate gratitude" aims at blessings which we can see, touch, taste and enjoy with the immediacy of our human experience. But peel these away and we sit in ashes asking, "but what about (fill in the blank)" When these proximate blessings in our lives are absent or simply fail to provide adequate impetus to rejoice and give thanks, we have to trace them back to what he calls "ultimate gratitude." For the apostle/martyr and generations of Christians after him, the sunbeam of earthly blessings can be traced back to its source, the sun of God's character. The ground of Paul's instruction is none other than the promises of God. Holding on to promises of eternal life, future restoration and final justice and the those of present forgiveness, peace and presence, the one who trusts in him will have reason to rejoice and give thanks in every circumstance. Even in all of the scenarios which my tangled thinking can present as a rebuttal.
In truth, I am thankful, very thankful, for the material blessings that I enjoy every day. I am thankful for family, those of blood and of covenant. Tracy and I are thankful for the growing number of folks who have committed their hearts in prayer and their hands in financial promises to support our movement into a life in missions. Concurrently, I am surrounded by people who face the very circumstances that would cause them to approach Paul, tap him on his scarred up shoulder and say, "Excuse me, sir, but what about..." These questions are meant to lead you and me to look into his tear filled eyes and hear, "Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing. Not one thing. Now, what about that?"
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