Thanksgiving Reset?

Are you rethinking how you will be celebrating Thanksgiving this year? As we approach this holiday, I’ve been thinking back to where I was two years ago.

In August of 2018, I was getting ready for a two-day-a-week class I would be teaching to junior high students. I had purchased gratitude journals  for each of them. My plan was to encourage them to write down something they were thankful for each morning we met. Recording what you were thankful was considered a good practice whether you were a person of  faith or not. A week after class started, I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Weeks later, I turned over my teaching responsibilities and began chemotherapy. I got really sick quickly. My energy levels dropped. By Thanksgiving I was making my family nervous whenever I insisted on driving. By December I gave up driving altogether.   

“Sacrifice thank offerings to God,
    fulfill your vows to the Most High,
 and call on me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

Psalm 50:14-15

Augustine had some thoughts about suffering, actually quite a few about these two verses. He wrote  that tribulation comes in many forms- loss of job, money,  home, family. It comes when we are separated from those we love. It comes when we are betrayed. It comes when all that we’ve work for, perhaps for years, collapses. He said that tribulation comes to all of us sooner or later.  So what should we do? “Let them call upon God. He will either heal us or teach us how it must be borne. Praise Him promising, praise Him calling, praise Him exhorting, praise Him helping: and understand in what tribulation you are placed. Call upon (Him), you shall be drawn forth, you shall glorify, shall abide.”

I don’t think Augustine’s view of healing or bearing up when tribulation presses us is meant to be taken as always exclusively either healing or bearing up. For me, and I’m guessing for many of you, it’s both healing and learning to bear it simultaneously. The chemo and stem cell transplant I went through brought and continues to bring a degree of healing. Yet, I’m still terminal.  Healing in my case has been a slow process with big ups and big downs. Healing has been brought to me through means- exceptional doctors, treatments, pharmaceuticals, and nutrition. It’s come through your prayers and words of encouragement.  It’s come through friendships, through family, and in particular through my wife Jenny.  I don’t know how long I’ll remain in remission. Whatever that is, I’m thankful for the grace God has given me to bear up under it.

While God can and does work directly in our lives, the primary way he reaches out to us is through others. 

So back to this year’s Thanksgiving.   

Are you rethinking how you will be celebrating it this year?  If you live here in Oregon, you know that Governor Brown is telling us to limit our family gatherings to six people or face arrest, fines, or jail time.  Neighbors are encouraged to report neighbors who exceed the head count. She sees it as a civic duty, the same way you would report a wild, out-of-control party in your neighborhood that must be stopped. Cheery.  

She also said, “ At this point in time, unfortunately, we have no other option.”

Really?   No other option?

There is another way. It may require resetting our understanding, our focus, this holiday season. 

Lockdowns and social restrictions, however well intentioned, further isolate us from each other. It’s easy to fall into the idea that “We’ll, it’s ultimately about ‘Me and Jesus anyway.’” The more privatized our relationship to God becomes, the less likely others will benefit from the gifts God has given us to be used on their behalf. We have to resist this kind of thinking.

I love what my cousin put up on her Facebook page a few days ago.  I know she means it. She wrote,

We are now a solid 8 months into this. If you are not working/not getting a paycheck/struggling to make ends meet and run out of food or necessities…please don’t let yourself or your kids go to sleep with an empty stomach. Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to send me a private message. I am more than happy to help you and your family out. I will drop and go, or order for delivery. No one has to know and I will pretend it never happened. What’s understood never has to be explained.

How do I know she means it? Years ago I was visiting my aunt’s home where my cousin was still living. My cousin was one of nine children, and I didn’t know her very well. I was friends with her brother primarily. Entering her home, I was greeted by my cousins, some seated at two picnic tables set up in their living room for eating. Etched in my memory was the atmosphere of joy in the midst of what I thought of as lack. My aunt was a single parent courageously holding things together.

My cousin is a giver. It’s an integral part of who she is, her character. Just like my aunt.

When it comes to having things, “creature comforts,” if I had to choose between “having more rather than less,” probably like you,  I’m choosing more. But, it seems the older we get there is a growing awareness that the “stuff” we have isn’t as important as we once thought. It’s still important, just not as much. As we mature, we become (or should become) aware that we won’t be taking it with us where we’re going.

Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
    when the splendor of their houses increases;
¹⁷ for they will take nothing with them when they die,
    their splendor will not descend with them.

Psalm 49:16-17

If you’re being hit with some significant losses, over time you will likely develop an awareness that what you once had wasn’t going to be yours to keep forever anyway. Once this awareness begins to take root, it will grow. Once rooted and growing,  you’ll begin to experience freedom. I think out of this growing awareness will come gratitude, resetting our understanding of thanksgiving and the blessing we can be to others, often without realizing. It. 

Just a thought.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Curt