A theological reflection on Thanksgiving...

Anna Grace and Amy Lynn are out doing that early-morning-day-after-Thanksgiving-shopping-dealio! What in the world is that all about? :-)

At any rate, it gives me some time to reflect on Thanksgiving. An elementary school teacher was trying to teach thankfulness to her students, so she asked them to write down all the things they could think of that they were thankful for.

She walked up and down the aisles as the students wrote these things down. She was impressed when she came to Chad's desk because at the top of his list was the word “glasses.” She said, "Chad, I'm so happy to see you're thankful for your glasses. Why are you thankful for them?" He said, "Well, they keep the boys from hitting me and the girls from kissing me." :-) Not a bad reason to be thankful.

What are you thankful for today?

Helen Keller was blind and deaf from her earliest years and experienced life in dark and small ways, at times. Yet she said this: "I have often thought that it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time early in adult life. The darkness would make him/her more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound." (Helen Keller) Thankfulness doesn't always come naturally for us. The hardest arithmetic to master, I believe, is that which enables us to count our blessings.

This morning, in between feeding my four boys, I turned to Psalm 22. The Word says this:

“From You comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the Lord will praise Him—may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve Him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn— for He has done it.” (Psalm 22:25 – 31)

Such a positive Psalm of praise, isn’t it? So up-beat and thankful, right? Life must be so good for the Psalmist. Have you ever read the beginning of this Psalm? Let your eyes rewind to verse 1.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, and by night, I am not silent.” (Psalm 22:1 – 2)

Isn’t that interesting? The end of Psalm 22 is a rousing chorus of praise but the beginning is life at its worse. This is a great passage to reflect upon on the day after Thanksgiving.

This Psalm is a lot like life. We're often between tragedy and thankfulness. On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the Lord led me to visit a dear friend. She is dying of cancer. She is around 40 years old with 3 young kids. I pushed back on the Lord asking Him if He really wanted me to visit this person on the eve of a long Thanksgiving holiday and vacation. Sure enough, He did. So I went. I sat. I cried. And I prayed. It was life, like the Psalmist and my friend, in between tragedy and thankfulness.

Thanksgiving is my favorite time of year because it reminds all of us to count our blessings, even if we are in the midst of tragedy. As believers, like Jesus, we know the end of the story and it is good. In the midst of tragedy, we lean on the fact that we have read the end of the story and God holds the future in the palm of His hands.

I wonder what unbelievers do with Thanksgiving? I am serious. Have you ever considered what an unbeliever is thankful for, besides the things of this world. It was Mary Ann Vincent who once wrote, "The atheist's most embarrassing moment is when he/she feels profoundly thankful for something, but can't find anyone to thank for it." (Mary Ann Vincent)

Are believers the only ones who can be truly grateful? Whatcha think?

Or, stick with me here, maybe it's not that believers are the only ones grateful to God, but that those who are grateful in life are the ones who truly believe in God. Only those of us who are truly thankful are able to ride out the storms of life, which might otherwise destroy us. Only those who have an attitude of gratitude know what it means to believe.

I am not sure we will figure it all out today. Besides, I now have four wild boys finished with breakfast and playing Wii - they will not be content for long.

I think the Psalmist wants us to dig into this Thanksgiving subject a little more than the usual American sentiment. I think that instead of just adding a few pounds from all the food we ate yesterday and the leftovers we will devour over the weekend, God is calling me, and maybe you, to go a little deeper with Thanksgiving!

Imagine as we celebrate this long weekend, there are some who are celebrating their last Thanksgiving weekend. Some of us will die, perhaps even tragically, before the next year is through. Some of us will find out that we have cancer in the next few months, and some of us will lose our businesses. Some of us will lose our spouses. Some of us will be betrayed by our friends. Some of us will pray, but the only words we will be able to cry/mutter out of our mouths are, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

And friends, if it doesn’t happen to you this year, I can promise you it will happen. And it's then that we'll need Psalm 22. Thankfulness and faith go hand in hand.

According to what David says, my faith in God is not just polite thanks for goodies and trinkets that He's given me; it's actually the other way around. In Him, my thankfulness is the cornerstone of my faith. I'm not thankful just because He's given me things, says David. Rather, I believe in Him because it's right to give Him thanks even when I can't point to anything specific--even when the chips are down, even when I'm surrounded by those troubles spoken of in the first twenty-one verses of Psalms 22.

Think, for instance, of the testimony of Job. That's what the book of Job is about. Satan says to God, "Look, Job serves you because you give him all the toys to play with. Toys first - thankfulness later. You know, if you'd take all those toys away from him, he wouldn't thank you any more; he'd curse you." So what happens? God allows those things to take place, for all the toys to be snatched away. And then comes the surprising ending. Job loses everything, all of those toys, all of those good things, all of that prosperity and that stability of life. Disease and disaster wipe him out. Sores cling to his body. The maggots eat his flesh.

When all is gone, Job cries out to God with a prayer like that of David and Jesus, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But then he goes on. He doesn't stop there, because thankfulness is the cornerstone of his faith. Even in the middle of that tragedy, the amazing testimony of Job is this: "I will find delight in the Almighty. I will call upon God at all times." (Job 27:10)

Do you see the picture? It's not that thankfulness comes on top of the toys but that thankfulness, which undergirds the faith, allows life to be lived. Thanksgiving is the cornerstone of our faith.

A quick, but powerful story will illustrate...

Guido DeBrae wrote the Belgic Confession, one of the most beautiful testimonies of faith in the Christian Reformed denomination. It is actually in the back of the reformed tradition’s hymnal. Guido was thrown in prison and sentenced to death because he wrote that document; eventually they hanged Guido DeBrae to death. It was a tough time in the history of the world and of that particular branch of the church. But the night before Guido went to the gallows, he wrote a moving letter to his wife. Listen to these words. He writes:

"My dear and well-beloved wife in our Lord Jesus: Your grief and anguish are the cause of me writing you this letter. I most earnestly pray you will not be grieved beyond measure. We knew when we were married that we might not have many years together, and the Lord has graciously given us seven. Had the Lord wished us to live together longer, he could easily have caused it to be so; but such was not his pleasure. Let his good will be done. And let that be a sufficient reason.

More over, consider that I have not fallen into the hands of my enemies by chance but by the providence of God which guides and governs all things small as well as great. And all these considerations have made my heart glad and peaceful. And I pray you, my dear and faithful companion, to be glad with me and to thank God, the good God, for what he is doing; for he does nothing but what is altogether good and bright. "I pray you then to be comforted in the Lord, to commit yourself and your affairs to him; for he is the husband of the widow and the father of the fatherless, and he will never leave you nor forsake you. Goodbye, Catherine, my well-beloved. I pray my God to comfort you and give you resignation to his holy will.

Your faithful husband, Guido DeBrae"

Isn't that amazing? Do you understand what goes behind something like that? Only those whose hearts are already tuned to thankfulness to God for life itself can weather the storms and the tragedies we experience during our sojourn here on planet earth.

In other words, Psalms 22 takes us deeper than thanking God for the weather, the food, the family, the friends, the house, the cars, the white or dark meat, and all the toys we love. Psalms 22 teaches us, don’t miss this, how to THANK GOD FOR GOD. It’s not even, “God help me thank you when life gets tough.” It’s even deeper than that – it’s thank God for God!

And that, my dear friends, is what Thanksgiving is all about!