November Thought #5

 "Gratitude is the ability to see life as a gift.  It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation."

                                                                                             John Ortberg

November Thought #4

 O Lord, You are my God;

I will exalt You, I will thanks to Your name;

For You have worked wonders,

Plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness.

                                                      Isaiah 25:1

November Thought #3

 "Gratitude is riches.  Complaint is poverty."          Doris Day

November Thought #2

 O Heavenly Father who hast filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works; that, rejoicing in thy whole creation, we may learn to serve thee with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                                    The Book of Common Prayer

November Thought

 I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart;

I will tell of all Your wonders.

I will be glad and exult in You;

I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.

                                                   Psalm 9:1-2

November Traditions

 November is here.  Some are thrilled that we are moving into the holiday season.  Others are stressed at the thought of preparing for the holidays.  This is nothing new.  Neither is November’s annual reminder to give thanks.

 

We are called to give thanks.  It is a theme that runs from the Old Testament through the New.  The Bible is God’s revelation to us and for our benefit.  It reveals a God who is glorious and worthy of praise, at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances.  But beyond that, Scripture introduces us to a God who is as personal as He is glorious.  Please consider with me just a few of the many, many examples offered in Scripture.  The LORD God breathed air into Adam’s lungs and shared the Garden of Eden with the man and the woman (Genesis 2); He tried to coax Cain to turn away from his murderous thoughts (Genesis 4); He allowed both Abraham and Moses to “negotiate” with Him (Genesis 18; Numbers 14); He satisfied Gideon’s need for reassurance (Judges 6); He engaged in a personal conversation with a rebellious Jonah (Jonah 4).  And of course, the LORD used individual, faithful men and women to accomplish His will.   He worked in the lives of Eli and Samuel to lead Israel and (eventually) put David, a man after God’s own heart, on the throne and establish David as the progenitor of the Messiah (I Samuel and II Samuel).  He used Esther to save the Jews from a hateful Haman (Esther).  He guided Elijah to reveal the power of the LORD to the people of Israel so that they would turn away from Baal (I Kings 18).  And if God’s personal attention, time after time after time, wasn’t enough, the Father’s only begotten Son, the second member of the eternal Trinity, Christ Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1).

 

First and foremost, the Gospels reveal a Jesus who spent His days touching and being touched.  Jesus opened His arms to those who had been dismissed, rejected, or neglected by their families and communities.  He heals lepers (by touching them!) calls tax collectors, and welcomes children.  One of my favorite “personal” Jesus stories is found in the Gospel of Mark.  As Jesus is ministering to the people who have gathered to see and hear him, a synagogue official named Jairus falls at His feet, begging for healing for his seriously ill daughter.  Jesus readily agrees to come to Jairus’s home, but as they head in that direction, they are interrupted by a woman who has been plagued with a hemorrhage problem for many years.  The woman is healed as soon as she touches Jesus’s robe.  It would be easy for Jesus to leave it at that and continue on His mission to Jairus’s home.  But Jesus gently demands a personal conversation with the woman and takes time with her to personally reinforce her faith.  I can only imagine the impatience and panic within Jairus as he waits for Jesus to finish this impromptu encounter and get to their destination.  When they finally arrive and find that Jairus’s daughter has died, Jesus takes care of the problem as only He can do.  

 

And so as we (hopefully) heed the reminder to give thanks, may we turn to our Lord and Savior who is as up close and personal as we will allow Him to be.  We are invited to approach the throne of grace with confidence.  As we do so, the perfunctory, generic “thank you,” “praise to you,” “praise God from Whom all blessings flow” phrases don’t quite do the job.  It behooves us put time, energy, and effort into pursuing our Lord and pouring out our hearts to Him.  We don’t need to have King David’s eloquence.  We have been assured that when our words fail, the Spirit will intercede for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26).

 

As we pursue Jesus, we will find that He has been pursing us!  Praise the Lord!  May we truly draw near to Him in faith, offering Him the deepest recesses of our hearts.  And when we do, something amazing happens.  Those who look forward to the holidays are able to celebrate more fully and joyfully; and those who are stressed at holiday preparation can lean on a Lord who genuinely cares about their stress and can help them see beyond it.

 

Stress Testing

 At my annual check-up this year, my electrocardiogram (EKG) showed an abnormality.  Thus began a summer of medical dominoes.  Although my primary care provider did not think my EKG was especially alarming, she recommended a visit with a cardiologist.  The cardiologist was wonderful, and although she did not think the EKG was of particular concern, she made a convincing case that a thorough evaluation was appropriate.  That meant scheduling an echocardiogram, a calcium cardiac scoring test, and a stress test.  As I was arranging my day’s schedule to accommodate the stress test, one thought kept running through my head: Given the stress of my days, why did I need a formal stress test?!  

 

The cardiologist gave me an A+ on my stress test.  I am, of course, grateful for that result, and I don’t want to take it lightly.  But the fact remains that I do not get an A+ for the way I deal with the mental and emotional stress of days.  To be sure, being a fallen creature in a fallen world does not help.  But Jesus came to redeem us, not only for eternity in heaven but in the here and now.

 

There are, of course, many Bible verses that would call us to trust in the Lord, throw our cares upon Him, and walk in His peace and joy.  But as true as these passages are, they are not the whole story.  Even as Jesus talks about the peace and joy in Him, He warns His followers about trials, suffering, hardship, and persecution.  We may not be of the world, but we are in it.  We are living in the now and not yet: tastes of heaven and glimpses of redemption, now but not yet the full fruits of Christ’s victory.  

 

And somehow, I find this encouraging.  It is neither abnormal or shameful to find life in this broken world challenging and even painful at times.  But I am still left with the task of living in the tension of the two realities: the challenges that I encounter today even as I catch glimpses of the redemption that will have its culmination in eternity.  

 

It isn’t easy to live in the now and not yet.  Some believers prefer to focus on persevering through the slog of this life, and others would minimize and ignore the hardships and claim victory in Christ.  It seems to me that maintaining a “both/and” mindset, while difficult, best reflects the dual realities of our fallenness and our redemption.

 

King David gives us an excellent glimpse into living a life of dual realities.  In the book of I Samuel, we read of Samuel anointing David as King of Israel when David was a teenager and Saul was the reigning (but disobedient) King.  In the approximately 15 years that followed, “King” David was hunted and persecuted by Saul.  We can read about David’s distress during those times in several of his Psalms.  In those Psalms, David is not restrained in expressing his distress and resentment toward evildoers who go unpunished.  But at the same time, David repeatedly expresses his commitment to following the Lord in righteousness and declares the LORD God’s goodness and glory.  He walks in faith to the best of his ability, and he restrains himself from killing Saul on not one but two occasions when he has the opportunity.  He suffers; he waits; he perseveres; he waits.  When he is thirty years old, David—finally-- becomes King of Judah.  He becomes King of a united Israel a few years later. 

 

David’s life as it is recorded in the books of I Samuel and II Samuel and expressed in many of David’s Psalms is one of both struggle and faith.  David’s hardships and personal missteps cannot be missed.  But we also read how the peace, joy, and power that flowed from his faith relationship with the Lord sustained and empowered him in the hard times and took front and center in the times of triumph.  David’s life is recorded for generations of believers not merely as significant history but also as a model of what life on earth as an heir of heaven can look like. 

 

When we turn to the New Testament, we see John the Baptist, imprisoned for preaching the righteousness of Christ, reach out to Jesus for reassurance that Jesus is who He says he is.  Jesus has a ready answer: 

 

Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me. 

 

Jesus’s answer also reveals an important truth about suffering: while the Lord does not will or rejoice in the suffering of this sin-laden world, He uses it to reveal His goodness and grace.  Indeed, I could make a good argument that David’s earlier suffering was used to make him a wiser and wiser king.  

 

To be sure, none of us has been called to be a king and ancestor of the Messiah, or as a forerunner of the Messiah.  But we are nonetheless called to fulfill the glorious purposes for which we have been created, and we are, through the Messiah, princes and princesses of the King for all eternity.  We are blessed.

 

 

Jesus, of course, has the last word.  

 

These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.