Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving is a holiday with a beautiful orientation. Scripture tells us that we are to give thanks at all times (1 Thess. 5:17-18) and for all things (Eph. 5:20), and so this day should not be a day to set aside a year-long disobedience of ingratitude. Rather it should serve as a capstone of our daily gratitude. We should walk in thanks all the time, and then annually we are privileged to make a special point of it.

Every year I try to express something of my gratitude in this space, on this day, and of course, I remain thankful for all the things I have mentioned before — for example here. And if you just type thanksgiving into the search bar a number of others will come up. I love all the holidays we celebrate, but this one is the down-homiest.

This is high gratitude, not high boasting. If you are going to boast, Paul says, do it in the Lord (2 Cor. 10:17). What do you have that you did not receive as a gift (1 Cor. 4:7)?

So I want now to render specific thanks for a few things I don’t believe I have mentioned before, at least not with the detail I want to go into now.

In times of controversy, when all manner of things can get flung about, I am particularly grateful for a session of stalwart elders. They are so steady and solid it would be very easy to take them for granite. They are also reasonably tolerant of puns. And the congregation of saints at Christ Church is as wonderful a collection of God’s people as you could find anywhere. They have been steady, unruffled, loving, joyful, and supportive. For just one example, in the unfolding of this most recent controversy, some of the women in our congregation, who had themselves been victims of abuse, decided to tell their stories, which they have done here. In those stories, they express gratitude for the help they received from the ministry here. I want to express a return gratitude for these women, and for all the saints of a blessed and blessing congregation. As the Philippians were to Paul, they are my joy and crown (Phil. 4:1). As the Thessalonians were to Paul, they are my crown and joy (1 Thess. 2:19). One of the things that Paul did regularly was give thanks for the saints he was ministering to. I thank God that he has given me a congregation that makes this pastoral responsibility so easy and pleasant.

(Speaking of the controversy, in the next day or so I am going to be outlining the principles behind my linking to “the videos.” It is a matter of basic justice, but Thanksgiving is not the time for blotching up the festivities with explanations. Just go and enjoy your people. But look for that soon.)

A second item calling for deep gratitude is the fellowship my kids and grandkids share. Last night was a quiet celebration for the birthday of the Liz, and so the eight adults got together and spent a few hours around a glass of wine, laughing, telling stories, remembering, and just simply getting along. They are all gifted, accomplished, forgiven, unthreatened, extraordinary and happy people. The lines have indeed fallen for me in pleasant places (Ps. 16:6).

On top of that, the grandkids all get along. By the grace of God entirely, we now have 17 grandkids. All three of our children and their spouses live here in Moscow, and so every Saturday evening we all get together to kick off the Lord’s Day. This means that there are 25 of us. Throw in my dad, 6 dearly-loved shirt-tail relatives, and our three boarders and you have a roster of 35. Then add any company we might be including that night, and we are ready to rock and roll.

Nancy prepares a magnificent meal for this mob, every week, because that is the only kind a magnificent woman can make. It does create an odd sensation from time to time, when some of the kids are visiting family elsewhere for the holidays, to have Thanksgiving or Christmas feel like a scaled down affair.

It also makes us peculiar empty nesters. Either 25 of us, or 2 of us. When everybody leaves, the house creaks. Either we are like the disciples in Luke 12:1, or we can lie back and stretch out our feet in any direction.

But this is all set up for the point, the central gratitude. With all the grandkids here, every week, the oldest one 17 and the youngest one just one-month-old, there is no squabbling, no fighting, no quarreling, no eye-rolling, no drama. They are all dear friends. They just love each other. It has been years since I have seen any cousin conflict. Now please realize that this is not a magic trick — I am telling you about the product, not the production, how the sausage tastes, not how it is made. I was talking to my father about it this morning, and he told me that he had observed the same uncanny thing, and for some years now. So one time, he told me, he had asked one of the grandkids if they ever fought. A reply in the affirmative came back. Who wins? he asked. Another of the grandkids gave the secret away. “Mother,” she said.

The last thing I want to express gratitude for is — and I am serious — technology. Let me give you just a couple of instances. The first is all the whirling cogs inside Logos Bible Software 6.0. My unfortunate tendency is to get some new program, learn about 5% of what it is capable of doing, and settle down to life in what I think is Fat City. But driven by unseen forces, and tutored by one of our Greyfriar students, I have been recently drilling deep into the different ways to use Logos. And I have to say I am just simply flummoxed by the thousands of biblical research assistants who were just sitting around on their butt in my library, eagerly waiting for me to ask them to go look something up.

And so here is another one. I have gotten an Audible account set up and now have a Bluetooth player in my truck. That’s fun right there. But, to use just one example, I also bought an audio version of the C.S. Lewis Essay Collection, a fat book, and have been listening to him for about a month now. I don’t have a big commute — like 5 minutes — but whenever I hop in the truck, I push a few buttons on my phone, and then drive around listening to C.S. Lewis tell me things. This is a collection of essays addressing everything under tarnation, so it is very much like having a brilliant conversationalist riding along with you. And, after a month of that, I still have 15 hours and 12 minutes remaining.

The way gratitude works, incidentally, is that any stopping point is entirely arbitrary. You could always go on.