No Thanks!

Lynne and I pray that you will all have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week. Thanksgiving has always been family, food, and football for me, with a time to reflect on our real blessings in Christ.

Perhaps you also feel what I often feel at Thanksgiving ... that I'm being forced to be thankful. Yes, there's family, food, and football and whatever else Thanksgiving may bring for you (like shopping with family - please don't make me), but it's Thanksgiving, so we're supposed to be thankful because God-something. But sometimes I feel more guilt and pressure about giving thanks than I feel thankful.

Plus, I'm really bad at that "What are we thankful for?" question while the stuffing is getting cold. I'm thankful for warm stuffing, thank you very much! The question can be awkward, producing peer pressure to say something adequately thankful (but somehow only the little kids get a pass for saying something cute like, "I'm thankful for snot").

We don't always happen to feel thankful on the fourth Thursday of November each year. Some years, we can successfully reflect on our blessings and the feelings of thanksgiving come genuinely. Other years, we don't reflect or we reflect with no tangible result.

So, we fake it. Or we sour it for others. After all, this is not a holiday that God ordained for us - it's a national holiday with origins in a God-consciousness. It's not a sin against God to skip this holiday, right?

The Bible teaches us in several passages to "be thankful." That doesn't mean, "celebrate the American Thanksgiving," but it does mean to be thankful to God for who He is and what He's done. Why does God tell us so many times to be thankful?

Precisely because we don't always feel it, we sometimes feel forced to express it, we have been known to fake it, and at times, we just skip it. God tells us to be thankful for the same reasons that we sometimes struggle a bit on Thanksgiving - we're not naturally thankful at all times. But being thankful is not only what we ought to do, it's good for us. It's healthier to be thankful.

In other words, we do need to be told on occasion to be thankful because our nature sometimes draws us away from it. So, holidays on the calendar can be the exact external push we need to remember to be thankful, even if we do have to force it some, fake it some, and feel a little awkward at times. Not to be disingenuous, but to intentionally counter our own nature with some effort.

May this Thanksgiving be a genuine excuse to embrace a thankful heart yet again.

Thank You for the Toys

This week, I got to speak for a few minutes about Thanksgiving with the students in our preschool, Grace Garden, and they taught me a thing or two about Thanksgiving right back.

I asked them, "What are some gifts that God has given us?" - fishing, of course, for things like family, food, homes, and so on. I knew one of the answers would be "toys!" And sure enough on both days, that was the very first answer. And on both occasions, I said, "What else besides toys?", and the response was "Toys!" After another "what else?" I got a list of specific toys. My fishing expedition was not yielding the species of fish I intended.

But later, after thinking about their answer and brewing on why kids are "so materialistic," I realized that they were exactly right. God is ultimately responsible for us having toys. He gives us the resources to be able to afford them. He gives us the families and friends who are kind enough to give them. He gave us safety to be able to enjoy them. And ... He gives us the toys.

If toys are a good thing, and they certainly can be, then they come from God, who is the giver of all good things (James 1:17), and we can be thankful to Him for them. In all my desire to be "spiritual" about the lesson, I overlooked the simple truth - so simple that children see it plainly.

Certainly, toys (kids' toys or grown-up toys like electronics) can become idols, of course. But for the good that they can be, it is not materialistic or non-spiritual to thank God for these things, also. In fact, being thankful for them can help us keep them in perspective, so that they don't become idols.

During my last trip to Kenya, we spent an evening visiting the same family we visit every time we go - Reverend Kute Wellington and his wife Margaret. They live in a hut with no running water or electricity, so every time we go, as the evening wears on, we have trouble seeing one another in the enveloping darkness. Except this last time. The evening progressed, the darkness came, but we could still see one another! And then I realized - the Wellingtons had electricity, for the first time in their lives.

I mentioned how great it was to be able to see them, and "Momma Margaret" proceeded to thank God for electricity. She repeated that praise several times throughout the night. I've had electricity all my life, and I had never in all my years thanked God for it. I had never thanked God for running water. I had never thanked Him for hot water, until my first trip and having to shower daily without it!

My Kenyan hostess and the kids of Grace Garden have much to teach me (the "pastor" and the "missionary"!) about Thanksgiving. And I'm thankful for them for teaching me.

Thanksgiving

I love all the ways that we try to rethink Thanksgiving. Every year, we try ways to make sure that the Thanksgiving holiday is about something more than food and football (as if there was something more than food and football...). We make sure we ask, "What are you thankful for?", remind one another to "Count your blessings," and sometimes, we even ask, "To whom are you so thankful?"

I was recently at an event where I thought someone might ask me to say something about Thanksgiving. Wanting to not be caught speechless (like I too often am), I thought through these kinds of ideas again, but didn't want to sound trite. So, a new question popped into my head - one that I'm trying trying to figure out how to answer.

Given that we are in fact thankful to God for what He's done for us, in this Thanksgiving week my question is this: "How do we express that thanksgiving to God?" If we're aware of our blessings enough to be thankful, how is it exactly that we are to express that gratitude to the One who has blessed us?

Certainly, we can say, "Thanks." And we certainly should. We can verbally, or in quiet prayer, tell God that we are in fact thankful. We can list the things He's done that we're thankful for, and then tell Him we're thankful. Many psalms do exactly that (e.g. Psalm 50).

But is that the extent of it? Is that all that we can do to express our thanksgiving?

We can work on our "attitude of gratitude" - intentionally checking our attitude and make sure that we replace bitterness and demandingness with gratitude. That's certainly a good thing that God must surely appreciate - thankful attitudes among His people. Certainly, a bunch of whiners is less pleasing to Him.

What I really want to explore, though, is how to remember the things that I'm thankful for and give God my thanksgiving by using those things for His purpose and His glory. Take that list that we generate when we count our blessings, and then for each item on the list, be thankful by using that item for God.

Thankful for your health? How will you use that health you're thankful for to serve Him? Thankful for your job? How will you use that job for His glory? Thankful for your family? How will you offer up your family to Him as an act of thanksgiving? Thankful for a car to get you around? How will you use that car to advance God's Kingdom? Thankful for your salvation? How will you use the new life you have in Christ to glorify Him?

The idea is this: We have so much to be thankful for (yes, even the material things). To be deeply thankful for the things God has done for us and given to us, use them for His glory as an act of thanksgiving. Not only to express your thanksgiving, but as an actual act of thankfulness - appreciating God's blessings by the very act of using them for Him.

That, to me, is becoming the idea of Thanksgiving. Yes, we should tell Him we're thankful. Yes, we should have a thankful attitude. I think we show the ultimate gratitude by refusing to hoard God's blessings, but rather use them for His sake.

Gratitude

I'm thankful for Bob. Bob worked hard so that men could take a rest.

I'm thankful for Jack. Jack turned an idea into a weekend.

I'm thankful for Bill. Bill makes time for me every month to ask me tough questions.

I'm thankful for Benard. Benard has given his life for the least of the least of the brethren, and invites others to join him.

I'm thankful for Jim and Linda. They enable an army of others to teach and love children.

I'm thankful for a couple of Susans. One of them volunteers so hard it hurts. The other adds creativity on a daily basis.

I'm thankful for Christina. Christina helps others think I'm organized.

I'm thankful for Bruce and Jon and Bob and Jill and Gregg. They do stuff that only gets noticed if it's not getting done ... stuff that rarely gets noticed, by the way.

I'm thankful for Ryan. Ryan writes encouraging emails several times a week.

I'm thankful for Nancy and John. They made a meal appear out of thin air.

I'm thankful for Doris. Doris is a shepherdess for several nations.

I'm thankful for Cliff and his cohorts. They flexed without breaking for who we will be three years from now.

I'm thankful for Dan. Dan keeps leadership fun. And serious.

I'm thankful for Lynne. Lynne traded sleep for removing ink stains from Kenyan shirts.

I'm thankful for the body. They received a friend of mine as a friend of theirs.

And that's just in the last week.

Thanks for an easy start

Moves are exciting, exhausting, stressful, and refreshing ... all at the same time. Our move to KC had all these attributes with far more intensity that any of our previous moves. And we're not exactly sure why.

But through all of the ups and downs of moving, one thing has been consistently positive about the whole ordeal. You.

You have welcomed us in, helped us to move, helped us get oriented, checked on us to make sure we're OK, invited us to share a meal, prayed for us, given us grace, allowed us to make novice mistakes (I hope to soon to be making veteran mistakes!), and listened to our crazy ideas with patience. You have given us verbal encouragement, written encouragement, and even the encouragement of just being able to laugh together. You have treated us more like people than like a pastor and a pastor's wife - we so much need to be more than my title with you.

So ... thank you.

We love being here. We're beginning to see the size of the task ahead, and we are anxious to be moving forward with you. We will have bumps and challenges and differences of opinions. We will have joys, hard work, and celebrations.

There are still some of you that we have not been able to connect with as personally as we would like. It's only been 10 weeks, but we feel a little behind on spending more individual time with each of you. We're working on it, but we invite you to not be shy. If you would like to get some more "face time" with us, too, then you should know that we love coffee!

In all seriousness, in the coming months, we would relish the opportunity to spend time with each family, somewhere, somehow. I don't know if it's even possible, but we're willing to fail trying!