Thanksgiving, 2009

Thanksgiving Day Thoughts-2009

M. B. “Bud” Fields, Jr.


In our world today, the very idea of Thanksgiving has, to a very large degree, been lost in the whole notion of the consumer Christmas holiday season. Of course, to those first Jamestown colonists in 1607, there were no malls, no television, and no on-line shopping to divert their attention away from giving thanks to their God for their survival, or their crops which would (perhaps) see them through the brutal winter. I have been recently reflecting on the difficulty of journeys. Those first pilgrims came into my mind, and visited my imagination, and left me with an awareness of thanks-giving that I had not previously experienced.

It should be noted that it was the survivors of the harrowing trip across the ocean from Great Britain who gave thanks on that first celebration day. It was the survivors of Indian wars, those who were left to fend for themselves in a small and unorganized colony of travelers who gathered on that day. It was only a portion of those who had begun the journey so many months before that gathered to share what little food they could muster who declared that, regardless of their present condition, they owed a debt of thanks for what they had survived, and not what they had endured. How did such an idea form in the minds of these tired, but determined sojourners? And, what do we have to learn from them today?

“Thanks-giving” is not a day. It is an attitude. Have we, especially in America, so developed that we have no need for giving thanks? Is this merely an opportunity to eat more food, gather with family at the ski slopes, and celebrate the beginning of the holiday sales? Well, perhaps. I guess it just depends on what exactly it is you mean when you use the term.

I believe that there are different types, or levels, of thanks-giving. I use the term purposely. It makes a difference to me. It is an active, powerful action that requires total participation and commitment.

The first type of thanks-giving is when you realize that the car did NOT hit you, or the boss DID NOT fire you. When such things as this occur in our world, we give thanks for what has NOT befallen us. We also tend to feel thank-full when we win the lottery, or get a pay raise, or find that special “dollars off!” coupon in the newspaper. This type of thanks-giving has been referred to as "natural" thanks-giving”, or “natural gratitude”.
This includes most of the things that are included in those meal prayers on this special day: family, friends, pets, loved ones gathered near, the presence of good fortune and/or the absence of sadness. Natural thanks-giving also includes a remembrance of those departed, surviving the near financial disaster, or having good health. You would find most of the items of “natural” thanksgiving as topics of most prayers heard around the dinner table or the family get-together. Natural thanks-giving also includes your appreciation for God, His blessing and mercy, and for Jesus. If you feel it appropriate in a church service prayer, or a prayer before a meal, it is most likely to be natural thanks-giving that drives the recitation, and creates the warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

It is not the length of such prayers which matter, but the content of them. Natural thanks-giving is a wonderful way to express your gratitude for the grace of those things which you have, and the mercy you have been given for those things you have NOT had to deal with in the past year.

Interestingly enough, prayer of natural thanks-giving need not be pointed to, or addressed toward God. “We are thankful for….” could just as well be sent to some guy with an auto-body shop in Buffalo, couldn’t it? It is not, generally, a statement to someone, but a reflection from you. It is interesting to note, I think, that such prayers as these are the most common type of thanks-giving prayers because they are safe, inoffensive should they be heard by a stranger or guest in our homes, and have little if any “meat” on their bones. They represent, generally, the “God" moment” in any home’s holiday celebration. Natural thanks-giving is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be the beginning of a deeply effective prayer. It is, however, just a framework that needs to be covered and filled. Even when we address these prayers to God, we feel as if merely mentioning the lucky streak is sufficient. Nothing could, in my opinion be further from the truth. I also believe these prayers, when they constitute the fullness of the prayer, truly offend God. I believe this is true because such prayers give notice of the pot, without recognizing the Potter. Can you imagine, for instance, how long such a prayer would be if you actually listed every blessing, good tiding, and happy fortune you had experienced since the LAST holiday celebration? By the time such a prayer was finished, your company would be dead from starvation, even as a feast lay before them! But, even in intimate gatherings of family and perhaps friends during a holiday meal, these prayers of "natural" thanks-giving must necessarily be short. Mother has worked for days. The food must not get cold. It would be impolite to keep the food waiting, after all.

There is a second type of thanks-giving too. It may come from, or rise from the natural giving of thanks. In fact, if it does not come from these foundational roots of thanks-giving, it most often does not appear at all. These are the items on the list of the “heavy-hitters” of our thanks. I am sure you know what I mean by this.

These are those things that are just too personal to share at a family gathering’s prayer time. Such things as the mammogram that was negative, or the hospitalization of the baby that led to healing. Surviving the fire that destroyed the office building, or the Hurricane that only destroyed what you owned, but not your life. Prayers of this type of thanks-giving are those that we tend to feel much more deeply, and personally than those of our natural thanks-giving. When we give thanks for our son who made it through the tour in Iraq, or the aunt who survived cancer surgery, or the friend who “made it through” the car wreck, these prayers go into the category of thanks-giving that is called " gracious thanks-giving", or “gracious gratitude”.

Gracious thanks-giving is almost always God-oriented (God-centric). Items on this list are usually those that we feel can only be super-human (outside the bounds of natural or physical laws) by definition. When such items make this list, we are giving thanks because someone, perhaps God, has intervened into the natural physical world and either provided us with fortune, or kept us from some life-ending circumstance. This type of thanks-giving is deeply personal, and most people would tell you they reserve such items on this list for their private prayer time. The result is that they keep their blessings secret. This is because these prayers of “gracious" thanks-giving tend to be individualistic: “My survival” or “my miracle”. They also tend to identify how they personally view God, their relationship to Him-or His relationship to them.
This can often be a reality that we personally need not publish to the world. This type of thanks-giving is deeply personal, and is usually the stuff of which tears of gratitude are (appropriately) made. The items on this list will not see the light of day at the holiday feast except in the boldest instance, and items that make the holiday prayer are usually those of the most recent experience. Gracious thanks-giving, or "gracious gratitude" necessarily addresses whoever it is that we believe is the cause of them.
For most Christians, that would be God or Jesus Christ. It is interesting to note that most christians find their thanks-giving limit somewhere among the pile of those things for which “gracious thanks-giving” applies. “Gracious thanks-giving” must necessarily address not only the giver of those things for which we are graciously thanks-full, but our relationship with that entity. The skeleton of natural thanks-giving gets covered with a skin that only we can recognize, and in a way with which we are comfortable.

Gracious gratitude was most certainly a large part of that first thanks-giving feast. These brave pilgrims knew God and lived their lives dedicated to Him. They would probably, today, be considered some kind of religious order, like the monks and nuns of the Catholic Church (for instance). Their relationship with God was loud, open, and “in your face” bold. Not because they were obvious and obscene about it. Not because they were so strangely public about it.
They had not the first choice. This was not the ending of their thanks-giving, but the beginning of it. It was the genesis factor of the most true giving of thanks possible.These truest pilgrims knew that no thanks-giving could happen without it.
Gracious gratitude overflows our systems. We just can’t help it. “Gracious thanks-giving” is beyond our ability to contain it. Amazingly, the number of christians who live their lives with gracious thanks-giving has become relatively miniscule as a percentage of the total these days.

The number of family celebrations which require the inclusion of gracious thanks-giving at the holiday table has dwindled. It is just not being done any more. This is an amazing reality, given the fact that the number of people who consider themselves to be christians is growing at amazing rates, not to mention the ever-increasing strife and turmoil at home and around the world.

Where “natural gratitude”, or “natural thanks-giving” seems mostly to be all about us within our own ability to determine our fate, and where “gracious gratitude” or “gracious thanks-giving" tends to be about us as receivers, there is yet a third type of thanks-giving. It was surely present at the first feast in the field that cold day in Jamestown Colony. It was why they even met--at all.

This third type of thanks-giving is called "radical gratitude” or radical thanks-giving”. It begins--and ends--with God. “Radical thanks-giving” begins with acknowledging exactly who God is! Before anything else, we give thanks for God. In every issue, there is God. To give radical thanks is not merely to be grateful. It is to bow in His presence--amazed! Not only is this a physical manifestation of the body. It is an absolutely internal reality within the spirit.
There is no item on our list at prayer time where God is not. It is not surviving the hurricane that matters nearly so much as it is the God who provided our safety in the storm. Do you see the difference?
We are not grateful that "Junior" made it home from the war with only minor injuries--like a missing leg. We are grateful beyond measure to the God who protected him in battle. This is a celebration of who God is, and who we are to Him, and who He is to us. As I stated earlier, it begins, and ends with God. There is no item on the list of radical thanks-giving which does not contain Him, or His mercy or grace. Every event, every moment of our existence is a living celebration of radical gratitude. There is no moment (good or bad) where we do not recognize the presence of God in it.

I am, today, radically "thanks-full" (Oh, how I love that phrase!) for so many things. In each one of them resides Christ. God lives, sitting on His Throne of Grace every moment, with every beat of my heart. If there were no good moment, still I would love Him with all of my heart. I see Him in all things, hear Him in all things. I feel Him in all things.

The good, the bad, and the in-between all are filled with Christ in my life. Every moment of my life, regardless of its condition, belongs to Him alone. I love Him. I want to live for Him, and I will die with Him. The truth of this reflects itself very poorly in most moments. I am a fallible, fallen sinner. Yet, and only because of Him, I stand today to be His alone. With every blessing of grace which He alone provides, I take breath. Even though I cannot do it as I wish, I desire only to let each breath honor Him.

He knows this truth of my life. I am not one bit better than any other person, and am more polluted than most. My life does not stand as a sterling reflection of the simplicity of truth which IS Christ, yet He accepts every moment of it. For this I am, moment by moment, radically grateful. That is no different this Thanks-giving Day than any other. Why?

Because I know deep within my soul that I am nothing more than a poor, penniless sinner with nothing to offer my Lord and King--of any merit whatsoever. I cannot buy His love, or earn His favor. The one thing I humbly submit to Him is the only thing He ever asked of me, or will ever ask of you. I give Him my heart completely, and I do it with only humble thanks-giving.

May you know this simple truth, as well. We come to Him as we are. We leave the encounter forever radically changed, from hopeless sinner to the eternally Beloved of God.

May you be radically blessed, indeed, this Thanksgiving Day.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Bud

M. B. "Bud" Fields, Jr. DMA

West Frankfort, llinois
Thanksgiving Day, 2006