Gratitude, Gratefulness, Appreciation, and Thanksgiving

Lord, thank You first, for the plethora of words for thanks in our English language. May the abundance of food we eat be matched by the richness and overflow of their expression.

Create in us hearts of general gratitude that shape our whole outlook on life and define our relationship with You. Help us take a position of gratitude, Lord, from which to operate, and let it promote joy, well-being, humility, and generosity, within ourselves and flowing out toward others.

Add to us specific gratefulness, Father, for each blessing You give. Help us not take for granted any one of them, especially the small, or the individual when they are rushing toward us in great numbers. Carry our gratefulness beyond duty to heartfelt emotion and real notice of Your love's expression. 

Bring us to appreciation of the value and quality of a person, a thing, a place, a virtue. Help appreciation sink deep into our spirits, that we don't forget, ignore, or run slipshod over the worth of people and provision you place in our midst. Instead, may we esteem them as the gifts they are. 

To culminate such inner work, we ask, Lord, please help us do acts of true thanksgiving, so that we not only believe but do, as James might say--showing our thanks to be true and encouraging others and creating community as we do. Let Thanksgiving Day be more than a ritual that assuages consciences while we sate ourselves on food and football; let it be a ritual that reminds us to desire real gratitude, gratefulness, appreciation, and thanksgiving in our hearts, and help us, Father, cultivate them to the full.

Amen.

Thoughts for Today

 

To receive the new wine, I must be a new wineskin. 

There's more freedom available in Christ than we're willing to accept. 

Instead of calling heaven the afterlife, should we call earth the pre-life? 

Does a Poem Mean?

 

Does a poem mean? 

Or is it that it sounds?

Or does it but gather delicious words

to scatter on a page,

like splendid floor

or quintessential parallelogram

or grandiloquent quinquennial,

fulfill one momentary queue

and then split

and vanish?

Or does it give foretaste

faint participation

in the creative power?

Uh-Oh, The Unforgivable Sin

 

When I was a new Christian, the topic of the unforgivable sin was pretty prominent in church circles. The Scripture references this in Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30, and Luke 12:10, all recording the same episode in Jesus' ministry when the Pharisees accuse Him of driving out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Jesus reasons with them that Satan driving out Satan would divide his kingdom, and a divided kingdom does not stand. He continues the discussion with more examples, saying you can't rob a house unless you first tie up (or otherwise render harmless) the house's owner, and that those who aren't with Him are against Him. Reading from Matthew 12, the relevant verses immediately follow and are linked to the argument by the words "and so." Verse 31-32 reads, "And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (NIV). 

Occasionally, someone will feel they've committed this sin and fearfully seek out counsel. Long ago, a woman said to me, "I don't get this verse. You hear people cuss out Jesus or God all the time, but I've never heard anybody cuss out the Holy Spirit." I think this example reveals what many people think the unforgivable sin entails, because they equate blasphemy with four-letter words. Others worry because they want to know exactly what this sin is, thinking this is the way to avoid it. 

This is not the way to avoid it, and Jesus was helpful and wise to discuss it just as He did. No more, no less.

Consider the Garden of Eden. In the current vernacular, Adam and Eve had one job, right? Well, okay, two: tend the garden and don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In all the garden, they were forbidden ONE thing. What happens when you are forbidden one thing? The "white bear" phenomenon kicks in. Psychology also calls this the ironic process theory. In short, if you tell yourself or someone else not to think of a white bear, that's exactly what you will think of. In trying to obey the direction, your brain will (a) try to push the thought away, and (b) continually check that you are not thinking about it. Of course, both (a) and (b) guarantee you are thinking about it. Did Adam and Eve know what they were not supposed to do? Yup. Did they end up doing it? Also yes. To digress for a moment, this is not an argument that there should never be just one rule (or an argument against all rules!). No, I think Adam and Eve's fall becomes a lesson in how vigilant we have to be, and how much we need God's help, and even more than His help, the desire to please and fellowship with Him, in order to avoid sin. Especially that one sin we are trying hardest to leave behind.

What if that unforgivable sin were defined as some definite, specific action? You know what we'd do? We'd think about it. Stop to examine it as we walked by. Go up to it and put our toes right smack against the boundary line and sniff to see if it was "good for food." That behavior and preoccupation wasn't in Adam and Eve's best interest; why do we think it would be in ours?

Turning back to our Matthew 12 passage, often enough when considering this topic we stop at verse 32 and don't read to the completion of Jesus' teaching. He continues, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." He then says people will give account for every careless word they've spoken. In other words, not only can't a divided kingdom stand, but someone with an evil heart can't speak a good word (can't cross over to God's kingdom in any sense); he is entrenched in his evil. 

Taken in context, then, the unforgivable sin seems to mean attributing the Holy Spirit's works to the devil, and perhaps also attributing evil works to the Holy Spirit--trying to produce good when, without Jesus as our righteousness, we are in fact evil and cannot bear good fruit. Does trying to do so constitute lying to the Holy Spirit, as Ananias and Sapphira did, and died for it? Perhaps. What I feel more confident saying is that constant and permanent rejection of the Holy Spirit's witness of Jesus Christ as Savior eventually becomes unforgivable, as does spending one's entire life believing they can do good while rejecting the need to be born again. If this is a correct view, then perhaps it's true, as I've heard said, that when a person is concerned about having committed this sin it's a sure sign they haven't; i.e., someone who has committed the sin would be beyond caring. What we do know is that whosoever will may take the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17), anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32), and that all who are weary (Matthew 11:28) and thirsty (John 7:37) may come. If you want Jesus, nothing you've done is unforgivable.

The Sin of Not Resting

In America--and I think not only in America--we have a culture of non-stop busyness. We have had for my entire adult life. You know what that is?

Pride. Fear. Meaninglessness.  

It's an attempt to bolster our self-esteem, in the eyes of ourselves and others, by implying how important we are. It's an attempt to avoid connecting with others and thereby devalues relationships. It's an attempt to bury pain, or grasp for purpose. It's buying into the lie that we are indispensable. 

It's removing our lives from under the care of Jesus, whose yoke is easy and burden is light, who is the only source of both self-esteem and meaning, who wants us to make time for others, and who will heal our pain if we will let Him in. 

We decided rest is for the lucky, or the monied (or the lazy), and skimping on sleep is a badge of honor (unless you're a child under 12, in which case we want you to go to bed already). 

But the Bible says God grants sleep to those He loves (Psalm 127:2). In fact, the whole verse reads like this: "In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for He grants sleep to those He loves" (NIV). 

Rest goes beyond sleep, quiet downtime in a peaceful atmosphere, or hobbies and pursuits that provide a change of pace or engage neglected parts of us--though these are all important to our health. God did the work of creation over a six-day period, and on the seventh day He rested. Was God tired? Certainly not! Yet He rested anyway; please let that sink in. How much more do we little dust-creatures, who do get tired, need to rest! What God was exemplifying in that seven-day period was the building of rest into the rhythms of life. I like to think of God's rest as less similar to a nap and more similar to the function of rests in music. The music doesn't rest because it gets tired. It rests for effect, for rhythm. Or think of a court of law, where the prosecution presents and then rests its case. Rest here means completion. Where, in our lives, is our completion? Is it because we're never done that we don't rest? Even the Father, and Jesus, had times when "it was finished."

Thinking about this, I realized that rest and fear are opposites. Someone said--I wish it was me, but it wasn't--"Fear is faith in the wrong kingdom." We could certainly argue that it's faith and fear that are opposites (though as the quote reveals, also weirdly the same), or love and fear that are opposites, since perfect love casts out fear. But I think it's also true that rest and fear (along with fear's younger sibling, worry) are opposites in that they have an awfully hard time coexisting.  

So God rested for a day, right? One-seventh, or 14.28% of the time? Okay, but let's consider this: our bodies need about eight hours of sleep per night. If we are resting one whole day, plus eight hours during each of the other six days of the week, we are resting 24 + 48 hours out of the week, for 72 out of 168 total hours, or 42.85% of the week. Call it 43%. I'm not suggesting we make a project of figuring out whether we are sleeping, worshiping, playing, watching our favorite show, reading, exercising, kicking back with family or friends, or plain ol' staring into space for 43% of the week. But I am suggesting that given this generous a potential rest portion, a lot more of us could come a lot closer.

Closer to "let go and let God" a little more often. Deeper into trust in Him. More balanced in our view of how important we and our whirling dervish actually are. Setting our minds on things above, not on earthly things.

Rest, child of God, lay the busyness at Jesus' feet, and reach for your heavenly Father.   

Distractions--Are They?

 

Recently, I was in a discussion about distractions. It didn't sit right with me, and I want to clarify my thoughts on the topic. First of all what are distractions?

A distraction is an action, line of thought, or path that diverts you from what you should be doing, thinking about, or pursuing at a given time.

That's actually a lot to unpack. 

First of all, nothing is inherently a distraction; e.g., that video game you're playing is a distraction only if you're using it to avoid what you know would be preferable to do at this moment. But if it's legitimately downtime for you right now, and your choice of activity for your brain's change of pace is a video game, the game doesn't meet the definition of a distraction.

Also, timing is important. If you're supposed to be logging in to work but instead you're catching up on the three weeks' worth of Wordles you've missed, the game is a distraction. If you're thinking about your novel, your grocery list, or the Little League game you're coaching at five o'clock, then those are distractions--right now, although they won't be when it's time for them.

Let's say something is a distraction right now. Is it always wrong to let the distraction take over? Distraction can be the mother of creativity, and we ought not forget that. Products as diverse as Coca-Cola and the microwave oven were developed because the inventors were distracted from their original projects. Sometimes you have to go down a rabbit trail awhile before you realize it's the trail you should be on. 

Ah, which brings us to that word. Should. Who decides what we should be doing right now, and whether other things are, therefore, distractions? 

The Holy Spirit living within us does. Right? Sometimes our goals are exactly that: our goals. That is, goals can be distractions. The thing God switches us to in lieu of our prior pursuits is the main thing; it is not the distraction. 

In the aforementioned discussion I was part of, games and other amusements were being equated with distraction in a rather absolute way. Perhaps we should be praying instead, it was suggested. And perhaps so. But here's another perhaps: Perhaps the accuser has come along to tempt you with a sense of false guilt for not performing a religious activity right now. Perhaps he's come along to lay on you another form of the American disease called Crazy Busy. We have been persuaded that we don't need and can't afford rest in its various forms, and therefore we should feel guilty taking it. Eschewing rest is sin, and I'll have more to say on this in future posts. 

But to begin with, at least, when faced with the word "distractions," we should stop and ask, "Are they? In this case and at this time? Are they really?" And then listen for the Holy Spirit's answer.  

Not Just For Thanksgiving

 

In autumn, the ruby blankets spread over the land. Fall color isn't just for the trees.

Praise God for variety. In foods. In the way plants grow. In His special provisions for animal and plant life in each and every location on the earth. 

When I was growing up, my parents stressed the importance of buying the products your region and state produce. Now, as soon as cranberries appear in stores each fall, I buy some every week and freeze them for year-round use. With orange, a bit of honey, and a shake of cinnamon, they make a wonderful sweet-tart sauce. A celebration of God and thanks every day. 

Ideas

 A common saying among professional writers is that they have so many ideas they will never live long enough to write them all. 

That was never me. 

In fact, one time I developed a program specifically about idea generation to present at a writer's conference--because who needed some techniques to do just that? Me! (Another common saying among professional writers is that the more you teach, critique, or mentor, the more you yourself learn. That one I can vouch for. Also, when two people emailed me to say they'd sold projects as a direct result of ideas they generated during my session, I was soooo blessed. And when I was asked to repeat the session at a later conference, blessed again.)  

For years--decades--I seldom had more than one viable book idea at a time, although you can make a career this way, to paraphrase E. L. Doctorow. (He said, "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.") And when you consider that the majority of the ideas other writers seem to be bursting with will not eventually become books--they never get to the concept stage, or they won't pass the market test, or somebody else will publish almost the exact same thing first, which happens way oftener than you think--you realize you really do need quite a lot of ideas indeed. 

That was never me.

Now, though? Writing for this blog? I have so many ideas I may never write them all.

They spring up at any moment, no matter what I may be doing. Often they're triggered by Scripture; sometimes a line or thought from another book suggests a topic; sometimes a conversation; sometimes they do just pop and glow like a lightbulb, seemingly from nowhere. What they are, I believe, is gifts from the Holy Spirit, whispers from Him to me, specific assignments different from those He may be giving to others. They give a sense of life, refreshment, movement, encouragement, and they make the point that this is all Him. They help me become less of me, more a vessel for Him. 

Overflowing with ideas? That was never me. All the better to see the Holy Spirit work through me.