This time of the year is a special time- a time of family, friends & football. A time when we plot out our eating schedules to maximize our 24-hour caloric intake, a time we plan our wardrobe for that inevitable waistline expansion, and a time we guiltlessly embrace, just one day later, the magic of the Christmas shopping season and, consequently, usher ourselves into the hustle and bustle, stress and mess that leads through the New Years.
Wait. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves.
1 Timothy 2:1 encourages us to "pray prayers of thanksgiving for everything and everyone"... so, even though Thanksgiving has passed us until next year, what are you thankful for? Sure, once we get past the knee-jerk responses of "friends and family," and really press ourselves, it turns out that we're thankful for extra sleep & extra cheese, rollover minutes & rolled-back prices, mulligans & mochas, flat screens & flat stomachs... That's all fine and dandy (and in the words of one of my 9th grade guys), "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD? HOW CAN WE HUMBLY SERVE GOD AND BE THANKFUL FOR SUCH MATERIALISTIC THINGS?"
"But what about" is a great way to spiral off topic for a high school student but this time struck me. How can I be thankful for my health when, today alone, 200,000 poeple will die from cureable diseases? How can I be thankful for an income to pay my rent and gas for my SUV when 1/2 the world lives on less than $2 a day? How could I celebrate my life's blessings with a feast when, on that same day and every day, 27,000 children died of malnutrition? How can I so enthusiastically boast in all of my superficial acheivements when my external world is so remarkably fragile?
"Aren't you worried about being humble?" Well, I am now. Aren't you? I liked to use this time of year to celebrate me and my year. I've earned it and God knows I have.. what's the problem with that?!? Maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe I haven't allowed myself to be humbled. Maybe that's why the words of Christ recorded in Matthew 6:33 draw me back:
"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
Before and above everything else in my life, actively seek out God's kingdom on earth.. where the heck do I start looking? The German philosopher Jurgen Moltmann, in his Experiences of God, felt that we find God most clearly and readily in the "forsakeness of others." Can God's kingdom really be in the pain of others? Worse yet, can God really expect me to praise Him in the midst of my own pain?!?
"Pray prayers of thanksgiving for everything."
Does that sit well with you? It didn't with me. Think about this: can we thank God for a divorce that has left us completely dependant upon His famliy? Can we thank Him for the loneliness that we feel without hope and an end in sight? How can we possibly thank God for all the pain and suffering in our own lives? Can we possible acknowledge the greatness of God with THAT?!?
As we are reassured in Romans 8, In the midst of our worries, our struggles, our pain, God promises us, not flowers & bunnies & fluffy clouds, but He promises that we are His and His focus. How do we know? The most loving, breath-stealing, awe-inducing act of all time consisted of God using the cross (the most terrible instrument of torture and death in the known world) to bring us back to Him. We need only to lift our eyes up to the One who has already done so much: He supplies strength for the weak, He's available for the tempted and tried, He guards, He guides, He sympathizes and He saves.
Can we be thankful in and through it all? YES, becuase nothing can separte us from Him. God is in all and during this special time of the year and all year, we need to seek out God in all and know His hand of grace is fully upon each of us.
So what about the rest of the world? Well, I'll tell you something. As we allow ourselves to be humbled in the sight of the Lord, let our hearts be opened to the plight of all, across all borders, all oceans, and even all walls in our own homes. Let us recommit to the call of Christ to do unto our neighbors and live the life of Christ all year long. AMEN
