Thanks, thankfulness, thanksgiving—this collection of words and their various derivatives are mentioned about 170 times in the Hebrew and the Greek. Let’s admit it, this is not going to be an astounding study because we’re all familiar with the concept. Right? We know that as good Christians, we’re supposed to be thankful to God for His many blessings.
So, as you know I like to do, let’s take a ramble into a few observations around thankfulness and go deeper than Sunday School catechism.
Receiving something
If we’re honest, it’s easy to be polite and say thank you a hundred times a day to those who do something for us. It ties off the transaction and everyone can go away satisfied. It’s a social observation, it works to steer the energy of polite public interaction, and it’s not a bad thing. But also, we notice when someone doesn’t say thank you, or acknowledge our saying it. Most of the time we let that go with a mumble about ungrateful people and get on with our lives.
But the acknowledgment means something, doesn’t it? It really does, even at that level.
So how might God, in Whose image you and I are made, feel when we navigate our days, our lives, unheeding of what He has given to us?
Salvation, peace, hope, healing, eternal security, yes, yes, yes, of course we’re thankful for that.
When we stop to remember. When we really reckon with the full implications of those actions on our behalf. When we let those actions and the resulting realities impact our daily approach to living.
But what about those hundred transactions every day that escape our notice? Being able to get out of bed alive again. The creature comforts of our homes. All our material needs being met, even if we’re not as comfortable as we might really prefer.
A quiet hour in the sunshine with a cup of coffee and the exuberant cacophony of birds being birds (even in winter!). Sweet fellowship and mutual encouragement with a kindred spirit. A podcast that puts the puzzle into the words that finally make the big stressed-out question mark relax.
A kind greeting from a stranger. Someone letting us get in line ahead of them. Something working out in our favor that we fretted over while being unable to do anything about it. Finding another pair of our favorite kind of socks after they disappeared from the racks.
Yes, even at that level. If we choose to receive these small touches as gifts, how blessed are we?
In everything
…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:18
This is a command of Paul’s that comes in a collection of heady ideals as lifestyle: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in everything, quench not the spirit, and so on.
This is easy when things are going pretty well. But what about when things aren’t going well? On those days when moment to moment requires much more effort than seems necessary, do we see any good happening?
For the weeks and unending months, when forward progress is difficult, we can’t catch a break, and development are only sideways complications or reversals of small victories…do we take conscious note of the small pockets of peace and comfort that come. Do we apprehend the acts of care from those who take note of our struggle and reach into our space?
When everything that can be shaken is shaking, do we remember to give thanks for the reality that all the promises of God remain even though we feel like we’re not seeing the ones we keep repeating to ourselves?
Perhaps, when we stop thrashing about, we can see how God is protecting us from further evil, even now in the middle of our disaster. Perhaps we can decide that He may be protecting us from what would happen in the future if we did get what we want. That’s something to be grateful for.
And for the coffee and the birds, the waking up alive and the socks, the stupid socks that don’t mean anything but we found them and we still like them, so thank you, God, for the socks.
In all things. Maybe not for all things, because some of that pain is definitely not of God, even if it’s allowed by God. But in the midst of all things, there are bits to be received as gifts.
Anxiety
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Philippians 4:6
Philippians 4:6-9 makes it clear that anxiety and thanksgiving are natural enemies, and that focusing on the one eliminates the other. We tend to come rushing to God with anxiety, not so much with gratitude.
But does it help to dwell on how awful it all is? Does it really make you feel better? For me—I just feel worse.
We can’t be grateful to God for the coffee and the socks and the sunshine when we’re ruminating on how stressful all the rest is is. And it’s hard to ruminate in the awfulness if we’re choosing to count the blessings. Even if all we can muster is gratitude for our relationship with Jesus Christ and our hope of heaven someday. Isn’t that enough?
And affirming just that much has a way of lifting our vision to other, concurrent realities for which we can be glad.
Thanksgiving is not denial, a cheap crutch. By example and exhortation, it’s a repeated instruction in the Bible.
Although…some days—this I know—it’s a sacrifice.
Sacrifice
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High…
The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God! Psalm 50:14, 23
The concept of sacrifice contains the concept of loss of something, a something relinquished at cost to the giver.
A sacrifice costs. A sacrifice of thanksgiving costs us the mindless ease of living at the surface.
Does our reflection on good things—on the Lord Himself—cost us anything at all? Like time we would otherwise be putting into something else? Like an expenditure of self-discipline and humbling of ego to think things through and acknowledge that He is Lord, I am not?
Do we pay the cost of our own will and understanding to stay open to Him and gratefully receive a new journey we’re just not sure about, an outcome we could have gone a long time without?
This sacrifice of thanksgiving forces us to examine God’s ideas of best and how He provides that best. It forces us to lay aside our ideas of best and what we prefer—that is—the benefit of our own power. It invites us to become acquainted with the end of ourselves voluntarily, but at the same time, it keeps us from navel-gazing and wallowing in self-pity and resentment.
The practice of thanksgiving at the level of sacrifice opens our eyes to the salvation of God, to the shockingly personal and demanding and socks-blessing-off ways that He deals with us, His beloved. Thanksgiving that is not mere lip service is our truest and deepest grounding in Who He is and what He’s about.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Psalm 103:1-5
And what more, really, are we after?
Toward the promise,
Lana
How’s Lana?
That’s a bit of an icky question. Which answer do you want?
Depends on the day. The hour.
I’m OK.
I’m struggling.
I’m in a new apartment, a tiny studio facing into a greenway (not green now, mind you) where I can watch the cardinals and squirrels in the sunrise with my coffee. There’s a large black cat without a tail and a large, shiny, black rooster which struts about as though he owns the place and doesn’t care if it’s sunrise or lunchtime that he cockadoodles for the sun.
I’m unpacked. It’s somewhat familiar, comfortable enough. It’s a bubble of tenuous safety in a whole world that feels incredibly less safe than it did a few months ago.
My writing clients are happy to have me back. The business adventure is boiling along and I feel off balance as I try to fit in and achieve productivity. The full-time grind is a shock. Most mornings I desperately don’t want to, but I’m also about maxed out on sitting around in a stupor. So I keep finding the next thing to do and doing that.
When I’m out and about, I’m driving streets that John and I did not frequent, not the streets where we belonged. Not the familiar roads to the doctors and our favorite haunts, and he’s not beside me, helping me count my way through yellow lights and making our usual silly comments about other vehicles—if I don’t say it first.
I feel, in the coming and going of errands, like I’m forgetting something important and I’m really going to regret it if I don’t remember what it was.
Except that I do remember. And I can’t go back and get it, turn around, close that terrible, open circle.
I do regret it.
I wish…
There are no words for how deeply, inescabably, unresolvably I wish…
But like I said earlier, I’ll be OK.
Here’s the link to the last issue Drought conditions
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Amen, Thanksgiving that is not lip service. God sees through that for sure. We can't fool Him.
God Bless you in your studio. Being able to see nature really helps.
Lana, I'm glad you found a new home.... I have prayed that for you. And so nice to have a green space view. Julie