The Dave Rave - November 2020

“It is my hope and prayer for all of us that thanksgiving will reign in all of our hearts and reign in all the fears, uncertainties, animosities, and disappointments that these troubling times might bring. May our faith be greater than our fears, and our love greater than our politics. Happy Thanksgiving!”

Greetings!

This month begins with a major election and ends with the Thanksgiving Day weekend. It's an odd juxtaposition. On the one hand, you have a particularly contentious event; on the other hand, a day of gratitude and festivity. On top of that, you have the ongoing pandemic which feeds the contention and promises to put a damper on a good deal of the festivities as well. Then there is the possibility that the election results could be contested in court, dragging out the contention for who knows how long. Toss in some inevitable expressions of being a sore loser and you have a recipe for chaos and ill will that is as nasty as the recipe for your grandmother's pumpkin pie is tasty.

My concern here is that Thanksgiving might get drowned out in the process. It is therefore against this gloomy backdrop that I read

St. Paul's words in I Thessalonians 5.18, "In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Note that he doesn't say, "For everything," but rather. "In everything." Contention, ill will, animosity, disease, isolation, economic hardship, and death are not things for which any sane person is grateful. They are all various expressions of forces that are most definitely not God's will for us or any of his or her children. Yet it is God's will that we not lose our sense of gratitude for our many blessings, even when remaining thankful is difficult. Why does God ask this of us?

I think the reason lies in the fact that gratitude is a powerful "vaccine" and antidote for despair and hatred. When we remain grateful, we remain hopeful. We remember that God is, and has always been, with us. God's plan is to prosper us. Jeremiah 29.11 says, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." This gives us the confidence that things will eventually turn out all right. God has not forgotten us. God is not withholding blessings. Even though the nations rage and chaos seems to be the norm, "The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge" (Psalm 46.7). We claim and experience these promises when we gratefully focus on God's goodness and compassion toward us.

Gratitude is also an expression of love and love has a way of driving fear and hatred away. While Thanksgiving dinners can turn ugly when the conversation turns to politics, the act of giving thanks to God can never yield anything but a tender, forgiving, and compassionate heart. When we focus on our blessings, we become mindful of God's mercy and grace. I like the way someone defined the difference between mercy and grace. Mercy, according to this way of looking at it, is when you don't get what you do deserve and grace is when you do get what you don't deserve.

The simple fact of the matter is that God continues to love us even when we are unloveable. As St. Paul put it, "But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5.8). Jesus, executed by political and religious establishments gone horribly and lethally wrong, still showed love and forgiveness to his enemies. If we take the time to realize that one of God's greatest blessings to us is forgiving, redeeming love, that should create a profound sense of gratitude in us. It should also remind us that we are just as capable of churlishness, bias, stupidity, and hatred as anybody else. In other words, God's mercy and grace given to us in Christ should lead us to a sense of humility and gratitude that express themselves in love and forgiveness to others, even those with whom we profoundly disagree.

It is my hope and prayer for all of us that thanksgiving will reign in all of our hearts and reign in all the fears, uncertainties, animosities, and disappointments that these troubling times might bring. May our faith be greater than our fears, and our love greater than our politics. Happy Thanksgiving!

Blessings!

Dave