Faith Works 11-23-19

Faith Works 11-23-19

Jeff Gill

 

Thankfulness as a reflex

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Thankfulness seems like something that, like decency, should be easier. But we're all surrounded by evidence that this is simply not the case.

 

This time of year we regularly exhort others and ourselves to "be more thankful." And there's no real argument against it: being thankful is good for our attitude and our blood pressure, thankfulness helps us be more aware of little and large things alike that we can gloss over in our attention to what we don't have, and giving thanks just feels right. It's probably why this non-religious festival is perhaps our nation's most intentionally observed event, with special dinners in the home and gatherings that have much less external or theological reinforcement, like Christmas and Easter.

 

Yet we struggle with it. There's a phrase that's been around a while on social media, one of those hashtag labels – #FirstWorldProblems. If you wrestle with your lack of a pool or a boat, that's probably a #FirstWorldProblem. In fact, if you get home and find your dishwasher isn't working, that's certainly an event qualifying as a #FirstWorldProblem. Or even a light bulb burning out.

 

The flip side of the snark is asking yourself what it would take to be thankful simply that the lights go on at all, which in many places around the world is not an everyday, 24 hours a day certainty. We fuss over our generators and whether we remembered to run the monthly or quarterly or annual test (when did we last test the darn thing?) of it automatically kicking on when the power goes out. Last summer, I got to hear people being thankful to me from Puerto Rico, because our larger church body had done an incredibly effective job of finding and transporting generators to the island after that terrible hurricane a couple years ago. They still remembered how much it meant to them for those shiny new red and black gas powered generators to show up. They were still, many months later, intensely and tearfully thankful.

 

I found myself thinking "I really need to get a generator at home." #FirstWorldProblem, indeed.

 

Thankfulness is an art, and not everyone practices it. Some people can be cranky in the midst of plenty, and we all know them, and try not to look at them in the mirror in the morning. Being thankful is an exercise, a choice we have to make, and I could even call it a habit worth cultivating. Thanksgiving is an annual event, and I'm sure there are folks who visit a gym once a year; I know some people visit church annually. But exercise and prayerfulness and thankfulness need some regular, even daily attention. It's not about worship services or turkey or owning the right stationary bicycle, but a habit of the heart, a reflex we've tended to around the gift and blessing of being thankful.

 

Grace at meals, even ones without a turkey on the table, can be a quiet, common reinforcement of being thankful. Pausing to notice blessings (counting them, even) is so close to prayer it might even count. Doing a regular review of what's working in your life, before you start in on your list of what's wrong, might just be a better way to work for self-improvement.

 

One of my favorite stand-alone verses in the Bible is Colossians 3:15, and the closing phrase, or sentence (Biblical Greek didn't come with punctuation, so it's impossible to say how independent this statement was meant to be). "And be thankful."

 

In the original Greek, it's even more beautiful: "Kai eucharistoi ginesthe." Or, "and thankful, be." You don't have to be terribly religious to notice the word here generally translated "thankful" is also the root word for "eucharist," the central celebration of Christian communion. "Eu-" is the prefix for all, or good, or true; "charis" is gift or grace or, yes, thanks.

 

So literally, "And for all good gifts, be; be mindful, be aware, be sensible of them." In the economy of the Koine Greek, just "be" or "ginesthe" carries a great deal of implied weight, but the meaning is quite clear. "And, thankful be."

 

This Thanksgiving, may the day be the start of a new habit that carries us into 2020, to thankful, be.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's got much to be thankful for, and often is. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.