Thanksgiving 2009

“There’s nothing to be thankful for!”

At one time or another we have all thought this.  We might as well be honest about it, there are times in our lives when we are so fed up, so hurt, so disillusioned by life that we can see nothing whatsoever to give thanks for.   This reality isn’t new to modern people.  In every generation, from the beginning, people have come into times in their lives when they even cursed the day they were born.  One writer, a man named Job, who lived about four thousand years ago wrote in one of these times in his life that he wished he could curse the day he was born.  So, it is pretty safe to admit that feeling utterly thankless is a fairly common human experience.

This experience can be especially acute at times like Thanksgiving.  That weekend each year when it seems almost by law that we are supposed to be giving thanks.  Sometimes we go through the motions, joining the family gatherings, maybe even attending a thanksgiving service of some kind.  But as we do it seems that the despair deepens instead of lifting.  Other times we just can’t bear it so we find some excuse for missing the family gathering or not attending the service.  In those moments all the talk about thanking God is so offensive that we just can’t bear it.

Maybe this past year, you experienced the heart wrenching, soul tearing reality of betrayal leading to a divorce. Maybe this last year you received the worst phone call of your life; a call that informed you that your son or daughter was killed in an automobile accident.  Maybe this last year, you dutifully saw your doctor for your annual physical and he discovered that you have cancer and this discovery has derailed your life in a way you never dreamed.

Maybe it wasn’t anything as dramatic but you are finding it difficult to give things this year.  Maybe a private struggle with mental illness has leached every once of gratitude from your soul.  Or perhaps a job loss or an injury has sidelined you from your work resulting in some significant financial setbacks that are making it very difficult to survive.  Maybe it is just that living seems so pointless, going through the motions, running in circles, staying on the treadmill of what we have interestingly come to call the “rat race” has just got us feeling – “BLAH!”  And in the “BLAH” of our existence, giving thanks seems at best insincere at worst absurd.

Now I get all this, that is if gratitude is a feeling and if you stop and think about it that is how we generally think about thankfulness – as a feeling.  But wait a minute, is gratitude a feeling?  Or maybe more correctly, is it more than a feeling?  Many dictionary definitions of “thankful” speak of it as a “feeling of gratitude” so I guess the fact that we think of being thankful as a feeling is to be expected.

However, this is yet one more example of how the Bible stands in opposition to conventional thinking and for good reason.  Conventional thinking insists that if you don’t feel grateful then to express thanks is insincere and hypocritical.  However the Bible’s approach to gratitude is just the opposite, we need not feel grateful, we simply need to choose to express gratitude.  The Bible doesn’t ask us to “feel” grateful, but it does challenge us to give thanks.
 
In the environment in which I work, it can be a hard sell, this encouraging people to choose to be thankful, when they are in the hospital with cancer, or suffering from pneumonia, or recovering from surgery or on the Rehab Unit trying to see what will come back after a stroke.  There are a few that valiantly choose gratitude even in the face of the adversities that bring them to the hospital, but there are some who struggle and I certainly can understand this. There have been quite a few Thanksgivings in my life when there were not many feelings of gratitude and to choose to be grateful, to express thankfulness was nothing short of an act of faith.  But that’s the secret.  If gratitude is chosen as an act of faith, expressing thankfulness simply because God says it is the right and good thing to do, regardless of my circumstances, some pretty incredible things can happen.

When as an act of faith I choose to be grateful, a change in perspective can begin to take place.  When I am feeling ungrateful, my perspective is pretty ego-centric.  My life isn’t going well, my situation isn’t what I want it to be, consequently, what sense does it make to be grateful?  But when as an act of faith I choose to be grateful, my perspective broadens, the picture I am seeing is bigger than just “me” and I can see the real blessings that I enjoy, blessings that I was blind to when my focus was on my predicament.  Don’t get me wrong, this is no walk in the park, it’s not easy to choose to be grateful and it certainly is not easy to say thank you to God as an act of faith.  But then, being a true follower of God is never easy.

When I chose, as an act of faith, to say “Thank You” to God, then my view of God often changes as well.  Instead of blaming God for being the source of my misery and difficulty, I can begin to more accurately see God as one who cares for me, one who loves me and one who has promised to provide for me.  When I can stop blaming God (and let’s be honest, we all do from time to time) and begin to thank God and trust that his purposes are good and right even if at the moment I don’t understand them.  Then instead of setting myself against God, I chose to walk with God and to trust that in following Him, even the hardships of life will one day have meaning and purpose and that the suffering I experience is not meaningless or in vain.

When I choose to be grateful as an act of faith, the choice often transforms my perception of my circumstances.  One way that this transforms my perception is that my circumstances no longer look as bad as I had earlier thought them to be.  Blinded by anger and bitterness, it is almost impossible to accurately see my circumstances.  But when my eyes are opened by choosing to be grateful, as an act of faith, my perspective on my circumstances changes and although things may still be hard, it is not the impossibly hard that I believed it was before I chose to trust God.

I’m hardly a Polly-Anna optimist.  I am a realist.  I tend to work hard at staying grounded in reality, even though doing so often means living with unpleasantness.  As this Thanksgiving Day approaches, you may not feel grateful.  Let me assure you, this is just fine with God.  God knows we will not always feel grateful.  But God also knows that if we always choose to be thankful, to express gratitude even in the face of what seems to be absurd realities, that the very act of faith will change our perspective sufficiently as to lift us out of despair.

That’s my hope for you this Thanksgiving.  Choose to express gratitude, not because you feel it, but because God encourages it.  This act of faith has the power to change us, change our perspective, and with those changes, allow you to walk closer to God and make life’s miseries and problems easier to live with.