Thanksgiving, a daily observance

This post is an adaptation of the devotional Chase gave at our annual family get together with my dad's side of the family. He was nominated to give the devo this year, and the following was what he presented. It was well received, and I'm proud of him for it. It makes me all the more thankful for him. And now, without further ado...

Since the precedence for the holiday of Thanksgiving is not one given to us in the Bible, I naturally turned to the next most authoritative historical document I could access: Wikipedia.

As it turns out, there is no single, unified account of the start of a Thanksgiving observance, even among Wikipedia contributors. Some accounts credit the Spanish (yo quiero turkey), some the Pilgrims (including the not insignificant contributions of Charlie Brown), while others even credit **gasp** the Canadians.

However one piece of history that is not in dispute is President Abraham Lincoln’s formal proclamation of a nationwide Thanksgiving observance in 1863. While the date may seem insignificant at first glance, it was, in fact, in the midst of a time that few families would fondly recall as a time fit to give thanks. The year 1863 was the exact midpoint of the American Civil War, a conflict so bloody that it resulted in more American deaths than all other wars combined, and there was no end in sight.

Yet it was against this backdrop that Lincoln issued the proclamation that America’s citizens should stop and be thankful to God for His many blessings. To the people of that day it had to sound a little like a dentist halting mid-root canal and commenting, “we should pause for a moment to thank God for blessing you with some REALLY nice teeth!” Giving thanks simply would not have been the typical response under those circumstances.

When I thought about a figure from the Bible who exemplifies giving thanks, my first thought was the Apostle Paul. But the more I researched, the more apparent it became to me that he should have been the most unlikely candidate. When we first meet Paul, he is a guy who, for all practical intents and purposes, has it made. I had always pictured him as this smart, good-looking, up-and-coming bachelor who landed a cushy government job that afforded him all the luxuries, travel, and ritual stonings a guy could ask for. Even drove a government donkey, and we read that God himself covered Paul's vision plan. What’s not to be thankful for? The guy is a Norman Rockwell portrait of power and success.

But then I ran across this description of Paul: “He was a man of little stature, dark-complexioned, thin-haired upon the head, bowlegged, blind in one eye and a great hooked nose that sprang from the point where his thick eyebrows met, he was called an ‘ugly little Jew’ and was described as having some deformity of body.”

(And you always wondered why Paul said that it’s a good thing to be single and celibate like he was? Let’s be honest, it probably wasn’t really up to him in the first place.)

But when he appears to be on top of the world is the exact point at which he ISN’T giving thanks. That comes later, after he loses all of the perks that came with being a member of the religious elite and instead is in the middle stages of life as the object of riots, floggings, wrongful accusations, attempted stonings, half a dozen years of imprisonment, shipwreck, and eventual beheading.

This is the Paul who we find singing praises while shackled in an underground jail cell. One historian describes these jails as being:

…Sunk about twelve feet underground. Walls secure it on every side, and over it is a vaulted roof connected with stone arches; but its appearance is disgusting and horrible, by reason of the filth, darkness and stench. Lighting was indeed poor, primarily coming from torches or oil lamps. The guards might have had fires to provide heat in the winter or to cook food. These guards were usually soldiers. Being a prison guard was not an appealing job and was often given to the poorest soldiers. Some of the guards were cruel; and prisoners, particularly ones not Roman, were defenseless. Under Roman law, if a prisoner escaped, the guard was executed. This tended to make the guards cautious about their wards, to say the least. Prisoners were manacled using different lengths of chain, probably reflecting the security risk, the nature of the accusation, and the attitude of the guards. A short chain could hold a prisoner continually upright, dependent upon others for everything. A longer chain might permit a prisoner to take a step or two from the wall and to sit or to lie down. Some prisoners were placed in stocks, their ankles held apart. These persons were forced to sit on the same filthy spot continually.

I don’t know about you, but this is not likely a situation I’d be quick to sing praises about.

But what I’ve learned from Paul is that while it’s easy to give thanks to God for the good stuff—our health, relationships, job opportunities—those aren’t exclusively the examples that we see in the Bible, and more is expected of us. Sure we want to thank God for the good, but what about thanking him for the blessings we don’t understand?

Steph has mentioned to me on several occasions her disdain for the popular Christian idea that it’s only when things are going well or when life is easy that we call ourselves “blessed.” Instead, Paul seems to point to the hard times, the moments when our plans are disrupted, life is upside down, our ministry falters, and this is when he not only tells us, but shows us that we are to give thanks to Him as well.

And if we concede that being thankful can occur independent of our circumstances, and Paul proves to us that it can, then an attitude of thankfulness becomes something that we can control, a perspective that we can choose to adopt or abandon. My encouragement to each of you this season is to take an honest look at your own life, from the joy of family and the friends to the misery of 20 page essays and the 60 hour work weeks, and determine for yourself whether your perspective is one that sees blessings only in the ease and comforts of life, or one that looks for opportunities to be thankful to God for strengthening you through the hard times.

One final story I want to share: As I was fresh out of college and working in community mental health, I had on my caseload about a dozen or so individuals who had severe developmental disabilities. Many couldn’t carry on a conversation, or were wheelchair-bound, or were completely dependent on others for everything from eating to using the bathroom. These people had been this way since birth, through no fault of their own nor of their parents. They attended a local center called “Adapt” where they would spend each day being supervised by staff whose job it was to make sure they were safe and marginally entertained.

And if I’m being honest, I was terrified of this place. I was afraid that I couldn’t mask my pity for these people, that I would say something offensive or do something that would set one of them off in a tantrum built up by the years of misery they surely must have endured. But I couldn’t avoid Adapt altogether, and the more time I spent around these “unfortunates,” the more my perspective began to change. Despite their circumstances, there wasn’t a hint of disappointment, not a complaint of “what could’ve been,” just a full-blown God-given thankfulness for each day, each activity, each bag of popcorn, and each human interaction.

During my time at that job, I happened across an old Christian story that tells of a preacher who, upon observing a lineup of men being led to the gallows, remarked “If not for the grace of God, there go I.” It shattered my perception of this life that I thought I had worked so hard to earn. Those people had done nothing to “deserve” their disability, and yet in spite of it they were the happiest I have ever met. But it could have been me.

Now when I meet a teen acting out at school, I ask myself if I had grown up in his household, lived the abuse or abandonment he’s had to live, who am I to think I’d be doing any better? What grounds do I have to judge someone else when I know that if not for the grace of God, that life could have been mine? Through the very people I wanted to avoid, God turned my perspective from one of pity to one of thanks, not just for the good or the easy, but for the bad and the difficult as well. And it is my prayer that God would touch your life with some much-needed perspective so that Thanksgiving may become a daily observance rather than a yearly one.