My son has discovered the joy of drawing. Thank you, Cat Kid Comic Club books, for your little “how to draw” sections in the back, and Press Start books that developed him into a Super Rabbit Boy-sketching savant. Now we look up “how to draw” instructions on the internet or check drawing books out from the library. Joncarlo’s sketchbook is fast filling with sketches of Steve (Minecraft), dogs, pigs, houses, and the axolotl is coming along quite nicely.
As parents, teachers, or anyone with loving children in their lives know, when kids begin to draw, they want to give away their drawings to someone they love. Joncarlo, upon hearing my praise for one of his drawings, immediately shifts to, “Do you want me to draw one for you???” Out of his love and thankfulness for me, he wants to give. The gift he is cultivating in himself only seems complete for him when he also gives it away.
Aren’t kids amazing teachers for us?
If you’re a churchgoer, you’ve probably heard church talks about various Greek words we translate “love,” and how they refer to different kinds of love in the Bible. Different words denote friendship, affection, and romantic love, as well as God’s love. Love means something different in the dialect of the kingdom of heaven than it does to the ears of the world.
So I have been pondering if the same is true of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving and Christmas, two holidays that can and should awaken the songs of gratitude in our hearts, often cause extra busyness and budget-busting. To be really real, I daily fight a mental battle against despair. Sometimes I fight despair as worry and anxiety of current problems balloon into future catastrophes that probably won’t ever occur. Sometimes it’s because someone I love is in pain and it feels like there is nothing I can do to help. Sometimes it’s missing my son in heaven so much it feels like my chest is about to crack open. Sometimes it’s just a wistful longing for suffering to end and things to be set aright.
But when thanksgiving captures my attention, despair, worry, and fear suddenly shrink to little irritations rather than the behemoths they once were. Why is this?
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
So, if Paul is instructing believers to “give thanks in all circumstances,” I want to know how to do that without it feeling like I’m checking a box, you know? “Thanks, God, for my nice house, thanks God for a nice day,” or even “Thanks God for this hard thing I’m going through because I know it’s growing me somehow.” Just saying the words as a quick fix often doesn’t quickly fix a thing.
I don’t want it to be just a word. Just a statement. Because giving thanks is, in God’s economy, so much more than that.
A story in 2 Chronicles began painting a picture for me of what it means to turn my heart toward giving thanks. 2 Chronicles 29 describes the righteous king Hezekiah righting the wrongs of the kings before him, particularly of his father Ahaz.
Ahaz was gnarly bad. He didn’t just kind of forget to follow God; he actively worked to erase worship of God. Then he took it a drastic step further to worship foreign “gods” like Molech, which resulted in child sacrifice of his own sons. 2 Chronicles 28:24 records, “Ahaz gathered together the articles of the house of God, cut them into pieces, shut the doors of the house of the LORD, and made for himself altars on every street corner in Jerusalem.”
Hezekiah, his son, determined to turn Judah around, which begins with a series of cleansing and sacrificing acts. He is seen in 2 Chronicles 29 cleansing the temple, recommitting Judah to following God. After the priests make a LOT of sacrifices. Then this happens:
Hezekiah gave the order to sacrifice the burnt offering on the altar. As the offering began, singing to the Lord began also, accompanied by trumpets and the instruments of David king of Israel. The whole assembly bowed in worship, while the musicians played and the trumpets sounded. All this continued until the sacrifice of the burnt offering was completed.
When the offerings were finished, the king and everyone present with him knelt and worshiped. King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So, they sang praises with gladness and bowed down and worshipped.
Then Hezekiah said, “Now that you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord, come forward and bring sacrifices and thanksgiving offerings to the house of the Lord.” So the assembly brought sacrifices and thanksgiving offerings, and everyone willingly brought burnt offerings.
2 Chronicles 29:27-31
A few things stand out to me in this account. First, a period of thanksgiving came on the heels of and connected to a period of repentance. Hezekiah allowed God to convict him of how his people had gotten out of sync with the love of God. Their idolatry was a living death, a shadow of what life following the one true God was supposed to be. Somehow, they became very aware of how far from God they’d fallen, and they were actively turning their hearts away from idols, sin, indifference toward God, and turning TO him.
The next thing I notice is that their sacrifice occurred in tandem with worship. The musicians played and sang psalms throughout the official sacrifice, and then they all sang and worshiped more, “with gladness.”
Then, I see that it was out of this repentance leading to worship leading to gladness that then led to sacrifices and thanksgiving offerings.
Why is thanksgiving so often in the Bible associated with sacrifice? With re-commitment? Is it really a sacrifice for me to close my eyes, thank God for all he’s given me, and move on with my day? To go around the table at Thanksgiving and recite what we’re all thankful for?
Thanksgiving–the GIVING of thanks– requires something more than a few words of gratitude. It is giving something out of myself.
I don’t think thankfulness can be about only appreciation for our blessings, or we run the risk of narcissism and disconnection from brokenness, loss, and suffering around us. Do you know what I mean?
Sometimes when I’m praying with my family, thanking God for our warm house, good food, fun day with happy memories, the words suddenly stick in my throat. I am thankful, VERY thankful for all those things! But the contrast of what suffering I know and that I DON’T know is going on in this world, this country, this city, this neighborhood–broken families, abuse, homelessness, hunger, discord, living life for so many without the relationship with Jesus–my giving of thanks for my own blessings feels incredibly self-focused if it doesn’t also often turn into a prayer for the hurting, the suffering, those who don’t know how to access their comfort in Christ.
Something about thanksgiving as God means it must hold the tension of both brokenness and wholeness. Themes of Jesus such as losing leads to gaining, dying leads to living, being the least means being the greatest-his reversal of the expected convicts me that true thanksgiving is more than just gratitude for what I’ve got.
You’ve probably had the weird experience of driving home from work with little to no recollection of the drive. It’s a little disconcerting. Was I really paying attention? But going on autopilot must be a brain phenomenon with relative safety because when a car swerves in front of you, autopilot shuts off and you slam on your brakes.
Similarly, if you’re anything like me, sometimes we get on spiritual autopilot. My husband and I laugh about the old movie Groundhog Day and how some days of work, school, home, dinner, bedtime, repeat feel that way. You just blank out, drive through life without really being mentally awake and aware.
But in spiritual terms, it means we are missing what we are actually a part of, and sometimes it takes a reset–a good talk at church, worship, getting out in nature and appreciating God’s creation–to snap out of our daydreaming and remember that we are really living our one and only life.
And yet, every day, accessing the heart of thanksgiving does this wake up/reset work. It’s one of the most vital tools God gives us to keep us awake to our reality in the kingdom of God, of being on mission with God to seek and save the lost, to see the unseen reality of the kingship of Jesus right here and now.
In Hebrews 11, the author is talking about Moses, and this little interesting passage about Moses’ determination to live a life following God in the face of other alluring comforts pops in.
“He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.” Hebrews 11:26-27
In a very real sense, putting aside my agenda to praise and thank HIM, does this! I suddenly see reality for what it is: the kingdom of God is at hand, is here, is working because Jesus is alive! And I’m a part of it, already transferred to his kingdom. My intentional shift into that reality causes me to praise and thank him, and praising and thanking him shifts me into that reality.
And, as I noted earlier, for me, when I default to autopilot too much, the despair of life can become overwhelming. I lose perspective. I don’t see hope in situations.
My favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins articulates this protest in the beginning lines of his poem, Carrion Comfort:
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
Paraphrased, I’d say it something like:
No, ew, Despair, you dead rotting meat, I’m not going to eat you!
No matter how hungry I am for comfort, I won’t sink to that level.
Or just lay down and die with you. I will go on somehow—
Just breathing, thinking, aching, not ending.
Thanksgiving is protesting despair, do you see? Hopkins says he won’t untwist the last strands of his essence by giving in to despair. But just saying to yourself, “Don’t despair,” doesn’t often do the trick. It must be replaced with something.
Another passage in Hebrews defines it as clearly as could be. What is the progression of praise to thanksgiving to action?
“Through him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” Hebrews 13:15-16 (NASB)
The sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name, leads us to do good toward others. It is all part of the same cycle: We swerve out of our autopilot and recognize God’s loving attachment to us, his representation of his love in Jesus. Then out of our wake-up call, we protest against our despair, our sleepwalking, our worry: we instead give God our gratitude by doing good to others.
The key to thanksgiving is found in our English translation of the word itself: Thanks-GIVING is giving out of ourselves.
“Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:6-7 6
Do you hear the notes of attachment to and from Jesus–walking in him, rooted and built up in him, overflowing with thankfulness for and from him? Thankfulness is the tether that ties me to reality in Christ.
There really is nothing that will carry us through the pain, the mundane, the sleepwalking, the suffering, but returning again and again to the sacrifice, the mindset-shift, the cycle of loving attachment that comes from a heart of thanksgiving to God.
So if, like me, you get caught up in sleepwalking, zoning through the motions of life sometimes, or being pulled into the worry and stress, or forgetful of whose I really am and the kingdom I am already a part of, then join me in recommitting, as Hezekiah did, to a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. But don’t miss the destination to where the road of thanksgiving leads: “And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
People are protesting a lot of things right now, none of which I will comment on here. But my protest going into the new year is one that chooses the sacrifice of a thankful heart, day after day, challenge after challenge, that pulls me out of my own headful of worries and does good toward others. It’s not easy. But that’s what makes it love; that’s what makes it worth it.
“Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my WHOLE heart.” Psalm 111:1
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