It’s Thanksgiving Sunday. That means that,
as a pastor, I’m supposed to put together a message about being thankful to
God.
But the thing is, you know that. You know you’re
supposed to be thankful to God. You don’t
need me to tell you. There’s nothing new about it. We know the
statement in First Thessalonians that says we should be thankful in all
circumstances. Every week when the offering is brought forward we sing
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow”. There’s nothing new I can tell
you about the need to thank God. There’s just doing it.
But sometimes that’s hard. I mean, it’s easy to say
“be thankful in all circumstances”. It’s easy to sing “Praise God from
whom all blessings flow”. It’s easy to say all those things. But
doing them, feeling them, that’s the hard part.
It’s hard because a lot of us are having trouble feeling
thankful right now. Our parish has been hit pretty hard with deaths this
year. I’ve already done as many funerals as I’ve ever done in one year,
and there’s more than a month to go. And there are any number of other
people who are suffering from serious illnesses. There are others who
have seen the breakup of their marriages, who’ve lost jobs, who had all kinds
of things happen that make it hard to be thankful.
The fact is that there are a lot of bad things that happen
in life. And I’m not going to stand here and tell you that you should be
thankful for them. Yes, we talked a month or so ago about how God can
bring good out of anything, even bad things, and I do believe that, but that
thought is not much help when we’re in the middle of the bad things. It
may give us some hope for the future, but right at the moment, we’re still
suffering. And when we’re suffering, platitudes about being thankful in
all circumstances don’t really help much.
That’s why we read Psalm 118 today. Now, that’s a
psalm that says we should be thankful to God. The first verse and the
last verse both say, “Give thanks to the Lord.”
But look at why we are supposed to give thanks to the Lord.
We don’t give thanks because of anything specific that God has done.
We don’t give thanks to the Lord because God has done things for us.
We don’t give thanks to God for having blessed us with health or wealth
or peace or joy or anything like that. I mean, we should give thanks to
God for those things, but none of those things are why psalm one hundred
eighteen says we should give thanks to God.
We are told to give thanks to God for two reasons.
One is because God is good. That phrase appears twice in the psalm.
And of course, God is good, and we should give thanks that God is good.
But what’s the number one reason we should give thanks to God? It
appears five times in the psalm, four times in the first four verses. We
are to give thanks to God because “his love endures forever”.
And that, really, is what it comes down to. Because those
are the things that we know we can always count on. Those are the things
that will always be there. Those are the things that will last.
Again, it’s important to thank God for the things God has done, but the
foundation of our thankfulness to God is not the things God has done. The
foundation of our thankfulness to God is the things God is.
Think of it this way. If our thankfulness to God is
based on God giving us good health, what happens if we suddenly don’t have good
health any more? If our thankfulness to God is based on how much money we
have, what happens if we lose that money? If our thankfulness to God is
based on a feeling of inner peace and joy, what do we do if something happens
to take away our inner peace and our joy? And all of those things can
happen to us at any point in our lives.
But God is good. God always has been good. And
God always will be good. And God is love. God always has been love.
And God always will be love. As the psalm says, his love truly does
last forever.
That’s the foundation of our thankfulness to God. God
is good and God is love. That’s the main thing we should be thankful for.
Because God’s goodness and God’s love will always be there for us, no
matter what happens and no matter what our circumstances are.
The author of psalm one hundred eighteen does not have
things always go his way. In fact, it sounds like there are a lot of
things that did not go his way. He talks about “being hard pressed”.
He talks about how “all the nations surrounded me...they swarmed around
me like bees”. He says, “I was pushed back and about to fall”.
Have you ever felt like that? Like you are really
hard pressed? Like enemies are surrounding you, swarming like bees?
Maybe not human enemies, but pressures, problems, worries, fears,
anxieties? Have you ever felt like those things were swarming like bees
around you? Have you ever felt like you were being pushed back and you
were about to fall?
I think probably a lot of us have felt that way at one time
or another. Maybe some of us feel like that now. If you do, do what
the author of the psalm did. Rely on God. Cry out to God.
Feel God’s presence with you. Let God give you courage and conquer
your fear. Let God be your strength and your defense, as the psalm says.
Because God is good, and God is love. And God’s goodness and love
will help carry you through, no matter how bad things look at the time.
That does not mean all our problems will completely disappear, but it
does mean that God will help us deal with our problems and get through them.
But you know, we say all that, and it sounds kind of like a
platitude, too. “No matter what your problems are, just rely on God and
everything will be okay.” But all of us have times when things are not
okay. And sometimes, it seems like things are never going to be okay
again. And we may say God is good and God is love, and we may even
believe it, but at that moment it does not help.
The thing is that because God is good and God is love, God
understands that. God understands that it can be hard to just relax and
trust God when it seems like all kinds of things are going wrong. God
understands that it can be hard to be thankful when that happens.
So this Thanksgiving, if you’re not feeling all that
thankful, it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up for it. Don’t try to
force yourself to feel something you don’t feel. It’s okay. God’s
not mad at us when we have trouble feeling thankful sometimes. God
understands it. Again, God understands us better than we understand
ourselves. God understands, and God won’t hold it against you. It’s
okay.
But even if you cannot feel thankful, my prayer is that you
still know that God is there. My prayer is that you still know that God
is good. My prayer is that you still know that God is love. And my
prayer is that you still know that God’s love endures forever.
Psalm one hundred eighteen repeats that line four times in
the first four verses. And so, if you’re having trouble feeling thankful,
I’d suggest you repeat it, too. It’s not a magic formula, but try it.
See if it helps. No matter what may happen, know that God’s love
endures forever. When we’ve lost a loved one, God’s love endures forever.
When we’re battling a serious health problem, God’s love endures forever.
When we’ve lost a job, God’s love endures forever. When we have no
sense of inner peace, God’s love endures forever. When we’re feeling hard
pressed by worries and concerns, God’s love endures forever. When
pressures, problems, fears, and anxieties are swarming around us like bees,
God’s love endures forever. When we’re being pushed back and we feel like
we’re about to fall, God’s love endures forever. Throughout all the
trials of life, and even beyond death, God’s love endures forever.
Life is not always easy. In fact, sometimes life is
very hard. But God is good. And God’s love endures forever.
My prayer is that, whatever you may be feeling now, and whatever may
happen this Thanksgiving and beyond, you will know that. And not only
that you will know it, but that you will feel it. God is good. And
God’s love endures forever.
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