Thankful For and Thankful To

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope this holiday finds you well, and that you are able to spend it with family or friends or both. Today's blog is a little essay I wanted to write about the meaning of "thanksgiving." If you don't feel like a Small Sermon today, feel free to stop reading and go enjoy your day. You deserve it!

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Thanksgiving is a special holiday. Though we are taught to be thankful all year round, having a day set aside for feeling thankful helps focus our gratitude.

Of course, it has become "Turkey Day" to some, and "Football Day" to others, but in general, with families & friends gathering together, many people do still focus on the thankfulness.

Interestingly, though, at Thanksgiving, people primarily talk about the things they are thankful FOR. This, of course, is perfectly natural. To feel thankful, people need to feel they have received something for which they can give thanks.

For me, there are too many blessings to count and list, but I would certainly start here:


I am so thankful for my family. Words cannot express it. Though I try. I am also thankful for the friends I have, especially for those who think about me frequently, providing me company when I laugh, care when I need it, and conversation - in person or over the network. I am thankful for my work, for my home, and for the beautiful world in which we live.

But I am not done with this Thanksgiving message. I want to continue on to discuss the full meaning of giving thanks.

Here is the first definition of "Thank" from from Dictionary.com:

thank

–verb (used with object)

1.to express gratitude, appreciation, or acknowledgment to: She thanked them for their hospitality.

And for good measure, the definition of "Thanks" from the same source:

thanks (θæŋks)
—pl n
1.	an expression of appreciation or gratitude or an acknowledgment of services or favours given

In both of these definitions, there is a clear message which is glossed over by many, but it is worth considering. The definitions make it clear there is someone who is thankful, and someone who is receiving the thanks, because the latter did something for the former.

So, if you are thankful, who are you thankful TO?

Yes, I am thankful to the people in my life who make my life so blessed. And if that's as far as you go in your faith, then be sure to thank the people in your life on Thanksgiving. For, just as a secular Christmas is to be more about giving than receiving, a secular Thanksgiving should be about being thankful, and to be thankful, there must be someone who deserves our thanks. With that in mind, look around at all those people who have made your life better, and express your appreciation and gratitude as you celebrate your Thanksgiving.

To carry the message a bit further, people of faith should pause to recognize that what we have been given, the materials and relationships for which we are thankful, are not merely gifts from people, but gifts from God. The original Pilgrims were not thanking one another. They were thanking God.

If you explain to a child the concept of Thanksgiving -- that we are grateful for the many things around us -- and ask them to list those things, they will often lists parts of nature. The sun, the air, the water.

If a person has no faith in a creator, then there really is no one to thank for these things. Such a person can feel lucky to have them, and they should, but they cannot truly be thankful, because they have no one to thank.

But for people who believe in a God, today is the day to thank God, as the true source for all of these blessings. Even the blessings which appear to have come from people are truly an expression of God's love towards us. And for this, thanks are appropriate, and a form of blessing in themselves.

Lord God, Creator of all, Source of Love and Blessings, on this day of Thanksgiving, we thank you, above all, for the gift of life and for the gifts we receive in life. We especially thank you for the people in our lives who show us love and kindness. For these, and for all, we are truly Thankful. Amen.

A happy and blessed Thanksgiving to you all.






[Originally posted in Snippets& Wisps on November 25, 2010.]

"Find What You're Looking For" - Wisdom from Amy Grant

 Amy Grant's most recent album, Somewhere Down the Road, contains a song called "Find What You're Looking For."

Like so many great songs, its lyrics speak to us in layers.  I think about part of the lyrics very often these days:

• There’s so much good in the worst of us 

• So much bad in the best of us 

• It never makes sense for any of us 

• To criticize the rest of us

Honestly, isn't that enough?  Couldn't we just stop there and have a lesson to ponder, to internalize, to commit to?

We demonize those who do not agree with us, but each of them is someone's child.  Someone loves each of us, or did.  And each of us loves someone, or did.  And only the psychopathic among us -- and there are very few of these, despite the cynical humor the guilty will use -- only the psychopathic try to do evil, knowing it to be evil. The rest of us try to live within a moral code.  And yet, all of us get it wrong, at least sometimes.

Yes, that lesson is plenty for one song.

But she doesn't stop there.

• We’ll just find what we’re looking for 

• We’ll find it and so much more

This is so true.  If you think you will find something in my actions, in my words, you have a tendency to find it.  We don't listen to one another.  We can, but we often don't.  And then we demonize.  Oh, and if we look, we can find mistakes people have made, and then demonize them some more, because they have made the mistake.  Yet, as the song says:

• Haven’t we all learned the best life lessons 

• By falling, and falling down hard 

• If we’re looking for somebody’s failures 

• We won’t have to look very far

 And that, too, is so true.

John 8:7:

⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

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Lyrics, and background quote from Amy, taken from here.


[Originally posted in Snippets & Wisps on March 3, 2011.]

The 7 Last Words -1: Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Matthew 27:46 (New International Version)

46About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

I have just finished listening to "Jesus Christ Superstar" again. Of the famous Seven Last Words, this one is used in the script as the second of three things Jesus says during the Crucifixion. (The JCS line is "My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?") As I heard it, I was reminded how my understanding and appreciation of this moment in Christ's life has changed and grown over time, and how Bible Study was such an important part of that growth.

When I was a teenager and first saw the film, it might well have been the first time I paid any attention to the Last Words. At that time, I took it as performed by Ted Neely - the frustrated lament of someone who truly believed he had been forgotten. Now, I see this "word" much differently, and that's because of studying that I've done and help from other knowledgeable people.

The fact that the verse itself contains the Aramaic helps us discover a few key points, and they are all related to a simple fact: Jesus is quoting the first verse of Psalm 22. Why does he do this? Is it because he is actually feeling forsaken? I don't think so; I think he's trying to point out a few things.

First, Psalm 22 is a psalm containing messianic prophecy. At our Maundy Thursday services at church, we always close the service by speaking this psalm as the paraments are removed from the altar and the pastor changes from normal vestments to all-black. We have learned, over the years, that this psalm teaches us what will happen to Jesus and what will happen because of him. The psalm tells us that the Messiah will be scorned (v.6) mocked and insulted (v.7). People will say that God should rescue him, since he trusted God so much (v.8 and fulfilled in Matthew 27:43). His hands and feet will be pierced (v.16). People will gamble to see who gets his clothing (v.18). And yet, the second half of the psalm tells of the joy that will come to God's people and the victory that will be won by the Savior He sends.

By speaking the first line of this psalm, Jesus is pointing out to those around him -- and to us today -- that the first part of the prophecy is being fulfilled, and by extension He is promising the second part is soon to come.

Second, Jesus continues to act in his role as "'Rabbi' (which means teacher)" (John 1:38) In order to instruct the young, rabbis would teach their students to memorize the scriptures, and to test their memory, he would speak the opening of a passage and expect them to recite the rest. And so, by speaking these first words, Jesus is a teacher to the end, as he provides comfort and enlightenment.

Third, what he wanted to teach is the importance of the entirety of the psalm, not merely the first part. And yet, Jesus did not speak the whole psalm - He started it. This is a key point. We are responsible for learning and understanding God's will and actions, and acting on them. We are to finish it. We are to learn its meaning. Then we are to accept the resulting grace.

Now, could Jesus have actually been feeling forsaken? I guess it depends on whether such a feeling would be sinful or not. As a human, he would certainly be "normal" if he felt alone as he neared his death. Somehow, I doubt it, because I'd interpret that as a loss of faith, and that is sin, and I believe Jesus was the "spotless Lamb" - without sin. Yet I could understand an interpretation that disagrees with me.

Whether he truly felt forsaken or not, the crucial lessons for us to learn from this "Last Word" are connected to the meaning of Psalm 22. Without Bible Study, I would have never known this, and so I am truly thankful to have been given that gift.

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Originally posted April 17, 2008

Beliefs, Morals and Science

Today, Grand Theft Auto 4 is released. With it, we're going to hear and read more people using supposed "science" to support their beliefs that violent video games such as GTA are bad influences on people, especially the young.

The simple truth, according to this MPR blog entry, is that the scientific link does not exist. The entry cites research by the co-directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, who, in this article, examine the claims made by the group "Save the Children" that "children are struggling to make friends at school because they spend too long playing computer games." The Harvard researchers also look at the same data used by "Save the Children" and others to support claims of the supposedly clear "cause and effect" relationship of violent video games and various negative situations, and this is what they (the Harvard researchers) say:

"The real puzzle is that anyone looking at the research evidence in this field could draw any conclusions about the pattern, let alone argue with such confidence and even passion that it demonstrates the harm of violence on television, in film and in video games."

My point today is not that these games are good for young people, or any people, in fact. I'm also not saying the games are bad for them. My point is that I'm troubled that people who oppose these games distort science and the data collected through scientific means in order to support what is really a moral argument.

The "hero" of the GTA games does things which, in the real world, are wrong. They are illegal. They are often violent. It may seem natural to assume that a person who likes playing this game would learn something from them and act in illegal or immoral or violent ways more readily than others, but the data does not show that.

If a person objects to filling one's mind with images that are wrong (immoral (sinful)) because one should try to focus on things that are right (moral (God-pleasing)) then that's understandable. But it's an expression of morality, and ultimately of faith.

Clergy of most any faith will espouse the view that your limited time on earth is better spent focused on Good than Not Good. But if a person is going to claim a causal relationship between Not Good images and Not Good behavior, then it is merely a belief unless it is backed up by scientific data. Distorting the data to claim support for a position is Lying, and Lying is Not Good.

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Originally posted April 29, 2008.