The message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church. The Bible verses used are Psalm 118.
Thanksgiving is this
Thursday. So how many of us are really feeling thankful?
I mean, yes, of course, we know we should be
thankful. And when we stop and think about it, we can think of things we
should feel thankful for. But when we get up in the morning, when we go
about our daily tasks, when we get to the end of the day, how thankful do we
really feel?
Maybe you feel thankful a lot. I hope so.
It’s awesome if you do. But sometimes it’s hard. Again, we know we
should. We know we’re supposed to. We know the statement in First
Thessalonians that says we should be thankful in all circumstances.
There’s nothing new I can tell you about how we’re supposed to thank God.
You already know that. Thanking God is not a matter of learning or
knowing. It’s just a matter of doing. It’s a matter of attitude.
But
even though we know we should be thankful to God, sometimes that’s hard.
I mean, it’s easy to say “be thankful in all circumstances”. It’s easy to
sing, as the doxology says, “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.
The world has changed a lot in the past year. COVID has completely
disrupted our society, and we don’t know when or even if things will get back
to normal. Sometimes we wonder what normal even means. And of
course, there are people who are suffering from serious illnesses, 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 before 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 tonight. 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 anymore? 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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