At the
beginning of our reading from Paul’s first letter to Timothy, here’s what Paul
said to Timothy, “I urge that petitions, prayers, intercession, and
thanksgiving be made for everyone.”
Let’s think about that. We get why we should pray for everyone. We kind of get why we should ask for the
Lord to intercede on behalf of everyone.
What about that last one, though?
Are we really supposed to give thanks for everyone?
That’s a tough one. It is for me anyway. I mean, if I’m honest, I can think of
several people right off the top of my head that I’m not particularly thankful
for. I’ll bet if you’re honest you can,
too.
I mean, there are the obvious
ones. There are terrorists, there are
dictators, there are murderers, there are all kinds of people like that. But the chances are we probably won’t come
into contact with a lot of people like that on an everyday basis.
The thing is, though, that we don’t
have to think of people like that to think of folks we’re not very thankful
for. There are people who are actively
in our lives, people who we see or talk to or hear from fairly frequently, whom
we’re not very thankful for.
These people are not necessarily
bad or evil people. They may very well
be sincere Christians, people who love the Lord and have accepted Jesus Christ
as their Savior. Still, there’s
something about them that just rubs us the wrong way. We hear their voice, and it’s like fingernails on a
chalkboard. We don’t necessarily hate
them. We don’t even necessarily dislike
them. We just don’t want to have to
deal with them. We don’t want anything
bad to happen to them, really, but if, somehow, they were to move away
somewhere and never contact us again, it would frankly be all right with us.
Most of us have a few people like
that in our lives. I’ll bet each of
here can think of at least one, probably more.
And yet, here’s Paul telling Timothy we have to be thankful for
everyone, and everyone obviously includes those people.
That means we’re supposed to be
thankful for those people, but how do we do it? How can we be thankful for those people who are in our lives, but
who we’d just as soon not have in our lives?
It’s not easy. We know we’re supposed to do it, but it’s
not easy. The thing is that, while
there’s an extent to which thankfulness is a conscious choice, there’s also an
extent to which thankfulness is a feeling, an emotion. And it’s hard to make ourselves feel
something we don’t feel.
So what do we do? How do cultivate a feeling of thankfulness
for everyone? Well, a little later,
Paul says this: “For there is one God
and one mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human, who
gave himself as a ransom for all people.”
If we remember that, maybe that’ll
make it easier for us to be thankful for everyone, even people we’d just as
soon were not in our lives. No matter
who we are, no matter where we are, no matter what we do, we still have only one
God. There still is only one Savior, Jesus
Christ.
That means that we’re all equal in
God’s eyes. We are all the children of
God. If we can remember that, it may
help us be thankful for everyone in our lives. After all, if we’re honest with ourselves, one of the reasons
we’re not thankful for some people, one of the reasons we’d rather not deal
with some folks, is because we think we’re better than they are in some way.
Now, we’d never put it like
that. At least I’d never put it like
that. I’d say, “well, we’re just
different,” or “well, that person just rubs me the wrong way,” or “the two of
us just don’t mesh together very well.”
I would never admit, even to myself, that I thought I was better than
this person I don’t want to deal with.
If I was really honest, though, I’d have to admit that’s part of what’s
behind it.
And that’s wrong. See, if we’re all God’s children, that means
more than just that we’re equals. It
also means that we’re family. We’re
brothers and sisters.
Now, I don’t have sisters, but I
have two brothers. And, to be honest,
there have been times when I’d rather not deal with them, too. If you have brothers or sisters, I’ll bet
it’s the same with you. There’ve been
times when we’ve argued. There’ve been
times when we simply could not see eye to eye on things. If you have brothers or sisters, or both,
I’ll bet there’ve been times when it was like that for you, too.
The older I get, though, the more I
realize the importance of family. God
put us into families, and God did that for a reason.
Remember in Genesis, where God says
of Adam “It is not good for the man to be alone”? God knows that life can be hard sometimes. That’s why God does not want us to go
through life alone. That’s why God put
us into families, so that we would not have to go through life alone. We need to be there for our families, and we
need our families to be there for us.
See, the thing is that, no matter
how long I live, no matter what else happens to me, I’ll only have two
brothers. Greg and Mark are the only
two people in the world who will ever be my brothers. I’ll only have one mom and one dad. The people I call Mom and Dad now are the only people in the
world who will ever be my mom and my dad.
Once they’re gone, I won’t have any other mom or dad or brother. That’s it.
That means that we need to find a
way to love and be thankful for those people who are in our family. No matter how much our family may drive us
crazy, no matter how much we may disagree, we still need to find a way to love
and be thankful for those people, because they’re our family. We don’t get to just trade our brother or
sister for someone else who we’d like better.
The people who are our family will always be our family. And when they’re gone, we don’t get to just
go out and get another one.
The thing is, it’s the same way
with God’s family. Because we’re all
God’s children, those people we have trouble dealing with are our brothers and
sisters. We don’t get to trade them for
people we might like better. God put
those people into our lives for a reason.
God does not want us to go through our lives alone. God does not want them to go through their
lives alone, either. We need to be there
for those people, and we need them to be there for us. We need to find ways to love those people
and be thankful for them, because they’re family.
Now, having said all this, I know
there are some of us who have a lot of problems within our family. Some of us have been betrayed by our
families. Some of us have been cut off
by our families. Some of us have people
in our families that we hope we never see again. That’s sad, but I know it happens.
Even so, we still need to find ways
to love those people and be thankful for them.
Remember, Paul wrote that thanksgiving needs to be made for
everyone. Paul did not write, “everyone
except the people who treated us badly.”
He did not say “everyone except the people who’ve betrayed us.” Paul said we need to be thankful for
everyone. No exceptions.
That’s not easy. No one ever said it would be easy. If it was easy, Paul would not have had to
write about it. There’ll be times when
we don’t want to do it. There’ll be
times when we think we cannot do it.
There’ll be times when we don’t even want to try.
God understands that. Even so, though, the message is the same. We’re supposed to be thankful for everyone,
with no exceptions. Because we’re all
equal in God’s eyes. We’re all brothers
and sisters of each other and children of God.
So, when it comes to those people
we have trouble being thankful for, let’s remember that. Let’s try to see them through God’s eyes,
rather than our own eyes. Let’s try to
see that person the way God sees them.
Let’s remember that person is every bit as important to God as we
are. Let’s remember that God loves that
person just as much as God loves us.
Let’s remember that Jesus Christ died for that person, just as much as
Jesus Christ died for us.
It still probably won’t be easy,
but we can do it. God never asks us to
do the impossible. If we pray for God’s
help and pray for God’s Spirit to come into our hearts, we can see that person
the way God sees them. And then we can
be thankful for that person. We can be
thankful that God has put them into our lives.
We can truly be thankful for everyone, just as Paul said we should be.
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