"Give Thanks!"

      Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

      "I believe my life is a gift.  I believe most of what I am, even my personality, is due. . . not to decisions I have made, but what has been given to me in life".

      So begins an essay on the NPR website, "This I Believe".  NPR invites people to submit essays about their beliefs.  Essays run the gamut from the political to the personal, from the silly to the sublime.  This one by Noel from NYC is thoughtful. Noel says, "I didn't decide what family I would be born to.  I was given parents and grandparents who devoted themselves to me . . .These resources and circumstances, among many others, have been presented to me---I did nothing to earn them. . ."

      Does Noel's attitude strike you as unusual?  It seems so to me.  Living as we do in a culture that idealizes the self-made person, when most people are more than eager to take credit for what they've done, it's rare to find someone who believes life is a gift.

      Still, there's something missing here.  Nowhere in Noel's essay is there any reference to the source of such gift, no suggestion there might be a power--- indeed, a Someone---beyond Noel's family.

      Writer Anne Lamott once said there are only two prayers:  'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' and 'Help me, help me, help me.'  Today, as we approach the Thanksgiving Holiday, we focus on "Thank you."

      It is easy to be grateful when the sun is shining, when life is good.  It's not hard to give thanks to God for what we experience as blessing.  It's different when bad things happen.  It's much harder to thank God when things aren't going the way we had hoped. When the promotion never comes.  When a spouse or child is injured or disabled. When the longed-for pregnancy never materializes.  When the medical treatments no longer work.  And in the world beyond our immediate concerns, there are wars that seem interminable; poverty that is mind-numbing; cruelty that knows no bounds.  How can we live gratefully in the shadow of all this? The harsh realities of life can rob joy and erase gratitude from our hearts.

      Next I would like to share with you a true story of two sisters---Rachel and Beth.  Rachel is intelligent, accomplished. Beth is mentally retarded.  Rachel has, in the eyes of many, "made it".  She has found the "Big Life".  With a capital B and a capital L.  Rachel is a writer and a professor. She has an impossibly busy schedule.  Yet beneath all her accomplishment, she is lonely.  She fills up her time so she might not notice how empty she is.  When her sister Beth asks Rachel to take a year off to spend time with her, Rachel says she can't possibly do this.

      Something changes.  Something unpredictable happens and Rachel decides to take the year off.  She spends the year with her sister, who spends nearly every day riding city buses.  Rachel joins her in this seemingly pointless activity.  In the course of this year of "doing nothing", Rachel discovers something.  Rachel discovers her own need and her own direction. It is not an easy ride; it is a ride that transforms Rachel and her way of looking at the world.  Rachel begins to appreciate Beth in a way she had never thought possible.

      This is what Rachel says of her year, "In the course of my life, cars and trains and jets have whisked me to wherever I wanted to go, and I was going places; I was racing my way to becoming a Somebody (that's with a capital "S").  A Somebody who would live a Big Life. What that meant exactly, I wasn't sure.  I just knew I longed to escape the restrictions of what I saw as a small life: friends and a family and a safe, unobjectionable job . . .. Although this [was] . . . just the kind of existence many people I knew were utterly content with, I wanted something more. Then in the winter of my thirty-ninth year, I boarded a bus with my sister and discovered that I wanted broader and deeper rewards than those I would find in the Big Life".¹

      Try as she might, Rachel couldn't go back to the Big Life, for she had, with the unlikely help of her mentally retarded sister, tasted the Deep Life.  And for her, the Deep Life meant she was full of gratitude, even for her sister.

      This true story about two sisters struck home with me, because I am a lot like Rachel.  There was a time in my life when I thought, I too, had landed the Big Life. And I also have a sister who is mentally retarded.  My sister Karen is not nearly as cheerful as Beth.  My sister is not nearly as independent.  There was a long time when I resented my sister, there was an even longer time when I prayed every day that she might be made whole.  That particular prayer was never answered, at least not in the way I wanted it answered.  I was not at all grateful for who she was or how God had made her.

      I never had a transformational year like Rachel: most of us don't.  Instead, by the grace of God, I began to be grateful, slowly, bit by bit.  I began to see God's grace in my sister, and I began to find my prayers answered as I became more whole.

      If anyone should have been ungrateful, if anyone could have been mad at God, it would be St. Paul as we find him hunkered down under house arrest somewhere.  Paul has been beaten. Paul has been persecuted.  Paul has been imprisoned. Yet he continues his pep talks.  Paul knows his very life is at stake, and yet not only is he joyful, he is out there telling the rest of us to be joyful!  In another letter he says, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess 5:16-18)

      How does Paul come by this?  What is his secret?  Just a few lines later in this letter, Paul says, "I know what it is like to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do everything through him who gives me strength". (Philippians 4:12-13).  Paul is able to live gratefully, because Paul's faith runs so much deeper than the pain of his present moment.

      Long ago Paul gave up the Big Life---the life of a religious zealot, a Pharisee.  When he was knocked on his keister and he came face to face with the Living Lord, Paul traded in the Big Life.  He traded it in for the Deep Life, which is a life of gratitude, no matter what the circumstances.  Paul is able to be grateful in the face of terrible adversity, because Paul knows the Someone who is the giver of all gifts.  Paul is assured the "Lord is near" because Paul knows he can count on God, no matter what.

      We are grateful for all good things we have been given.  But there is more than just our present circumstances.  There is the gift of God's son, Jesus Christ.  Preacher Fleming Rutledge orients us to the centrality of gratitude in our life of faith.  Gratitude that is costly, even at times, painful.  She says: ". . .the motive power behind all Christian action, is gratitude. . . Gratitude arises out of the Holy Week vision of Jesus, not . . .untouched by human pain, but down on his knees on the ground, weeping,. . . sweating blood, beseeching his Father, preparing to meet Sin and Death . . ."²

      Christ, indeed, inspires us to stretch the limits of gratitude.

      Are you able to give thanks, no matter what?  Do you struggle with a pain that will not let you go?  Do you 1ong for release from a heart-wrenching past?  Are you angry with God for changing your life and de-railing your future?  Perhaps you've simply become apathetic to the blessings you've received in abundance.  Perhaps you have been unable to see blessings for what they really are.  If you resist being grateful when things are hard, if you sometimes blame God, then St. Paul has a word for you.

      St. Paul has a wonderful word for you and for me---and that word is---Rejoice! Take heart.  The Lord is near.  Not the Lord of the Big Life, but the Lord of the Deep Life.  The Lord, who has fallen on his knees in agony.  The Lord, our Lord, who has wept at the loss of a dear friend.  The Lord, our Lord, who knows what it means to have nothing, to be despised and rejected, tortured and shamed unto death, even death on a cross.  This is the Lord who consoles us, the Lord who gives us joy, the God to whom we are---eternally--grateful.

      In a few minutes we will sing the Doxology³.  The Doxology when we praise God from whom all blessings flow.  The tune for the Doxology is called "Old Hundredth".  The tune name is connected to Psalm 100, probably the most commonly spoken psalm of praise and thanksgiving in the history of our faith.  These words and this tune are a cherished part of our Reformed tradition.  May we, with God's help, sing with fresh voices today as we lift our praises to God, as we continue to learn to give thanks, no matter what happens.