Thanksgiving Ghetto

I am something of a holiday junkie - I especially love the fall and winter ones: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. As much as I love them, they are often disappointing to me. I recognize it's because a single day can't possibly bear the weight of my expectations. And that the build-up to most holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas similarly overwhelm the day itself.

Last Sunday evening I had to speak for a few minutes to a church audience about Thanksgiving (I was the filler between two youth skits). As I sat in the pew during the first skit I had no idea what to say. I did a quick search for the word "thanks" on my Android Bible and noticed something obvious. The word "thanks" appears in a central moment of the Christian faith - the Last Supper. When Paul writes about it later, he says "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?" (I Corinthians 10:16 NIV 1984)

Thanksgiving? A meal, an ordinance, a sacrament that focuses on sacrifice is one of thanks? I have read many words of thanks over the last few days and even weeks. Most, if not all, were thanks for good things. Rightly so. But Jesus says "thanks" to His Father as He faces His own death. I get the notion of our thanksgiving in the midst of Communion for God's gift in Jesus Christ. But to give thanks in the midst of suffering, for suffering, for loss?

Am I grateful for the ways that God allows me to make sacrifices for Him? Can I stand in the midst of my friends and family and say "thank you" to God when grief and loss come to me?

I'm not quite there. Or, honestly, even close. The more I lose - a natural function of age and experience by the way - the harder this becomes.

But it is necessary. It is central. Perhaps I can't really be thankful until I give thanks in the midst of what I have lost.

Gratitude, real thanksgiving, is bigger than my blessings. It is more than what I have received with gladness. Saying "thanks" only for what I want and love is too small a thanks. It can't bear the weight of life or faith. My gratitude is overwhelmed when I can only give my thanks to God once a year or when I feel it for that matter.

Give thanks in every situation because this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

(1 Thessalonians 5:18 CEB)

River of Dreams

Yesterday (Sunday) was the one year anniversary of what was one of the most painful and difficult days of my life. What I didn't know a year ago was how much more pain the year ahead would hold. My grandmother died. My dad died. One of my dearest friends died. The issues and incidents that led to that awful day continued to spin out in the months that followed. You get the picture.

Billy Joel did a song some years back called "River of Dreams." I first heard it while I was in seminary (someone used it as the background to a video project) and I have loved it ever since.

The lyrics include these lines:

"I go walking in my sleep

Through the valley of fear

To a river so deep

I've been searching for something

Taken out of my soul

Something I'd never lose

Something somebody stole"

This song came to mind because I have felt like this song for the last year. I didn't lose anything - faith, hope, optimism, joy. They were stolen from me that day - "taken out of my soul." I wish I could say they came back. I have had some moments of peace and some times of refreshment. But the things stolen have remained just that - stolen.

Jesus said in John's Gospel -- "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy..." (John 10:10 NIV 1984). What is stolen from us by life, by others, by our own mistakes and sins - doesn't come back. It doesn't just return like a tide that ebbs and flows. Nothing I do will bring back my dad or grandma. Nothing can make that day a year ago (and the other days like it that followed) as if it didn't happen.

One of the things I have realized over the recent weeks is that I have to replace what has been stolen. I have to replace what has been robbed from me. I have to search for what is lost. I have to reclaim what I know to be mine by God's gift.

Jesus continues in John 10:10 with these words "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." Do you hear your own struggles in these words today? What has been stolen from you that you ache to recover - and perhaps can't?

I am praying for a year that is full of life. And if you read these words know that I pray for you as well to have the fullness of life that the Life Giver brings.