Friday, November 25, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
 Thanksgiving Day in the morning
I, John, saw an angel come down from heaven. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, the Devil, and tied it up for a thousand years and threw it into the abyss, and sealed him in.
What do you do on a gray-skies, chilly-drizzling Thanksgiving morning?
My soul yearns for the courts of the Lord. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest in which she puts here young. Blessed are they who dwell in your house. Here God lives among his people.
The roasting turkey would be filling the air with beautiful smells, but we’re headed to Chris and Melissa’s in Springfield for that. We would be oohing and aahing over the great Black Friday deals we got, if it was Friday, but it’s not. That’s tomorrow. Football games, basketball games, and soccer games will be shouting for my attention … a little later in the day.
Jesus said, “Consider the fig tree. When the buds burst open you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near. When you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near.
Macy’s parade is splashing all over the TV screen, and I feel warmed up watching Sinclair’s adorable green Dinos, Minions, Smurfs, and Smokey the Bear. And earlier this morning Arthur and his PBS cartoon family hosted Aunt Minnie from France, who taught Arthur’s sister to set a fancy Thanksgiving table with tablecloth, plates, silverware, water and wine glasses, condiments, and napkins folded just exactly right. All of this while Arthur was busy looking for his dog named Pal – you know, the one with the English accent? But Pal himself was finagling a fancy turkey dinner for the lonely dogs in the local pound, and then riding around regally in a fire truck during the Thanksgiving parade.
I guess that was my favorite part of the morning!
And I thought, as many of us do, of the holidays yet to come before the end of 2022, the feast in a few hours, the shopping tomorrow, the concerts and dinners until Christmas, and then in the darkness on Christmas Eve, waiting for the birth of Jesus, the return of heaven into earth, the hopes and fears of all the years that are met in Thee tonight. Happy holidays indeed.
Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Many of these celebrations involve fancy silver and fine food, red wine or white along with gifts, with hugs of happiness, with good health to all. Except when they don’t, of course. And if I’m not careful, when they don’t I resent or get depressed or disappointed or feel betrayed. What?
How about this from Brian McLaren, and his understanding of Jesus’ “school of gratitude?”
There is a blessing in poverty, Jesus says; to the degree you miss out on the never-enough system, you partake of God’s dream. There is a blessing in the pain of loss, because in your grief you experience God’s comfort. There is blessing in being unsatisfied about the injustice in our world, he says; as God’s justice comes more and more, you will feel more and more fulfilled. . .
With these counterintuitive sayings and others like them, Jesus enrolls us in advanced classes in the school of gratitude. He shows us the disadvantages of advantages, and the advantages of disadvantages. He will make this paradox most dramatic through his own death; his suffering and crucifixion will eventually bring hope and freedom to all humanity, hope and freedom that could come no other way.
Here is the deepest lesson of gratitude, then. We are to be grateful not just in the good times, but also in the bad times; to be grateful not just in plenty, but also in need; to maintain thankfulness not just in laughter, but also through tears and sorrow. One of Jesus’s followers says that we should even rejoice in trials, because through trials come patience, character, wisdom (James 1:2–3). And another says, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have” (Philippians 4:11), so he can instruct, “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
I didn’t see a single float in the parade that celebrated “all circumstances.” New York City’s Dorothy Day is gone, and her Maryhouse and Catholic Worker House didn’t spend money on a float. But they remain as not just remnants from past days but living testimonies to Jesus’ insistence that God is good, all the time. They might be on the roads less traveled, but they are serving many men, women and children, even as we watched the parade. McClaren knows this:
You may lose a loved one, or facet after facet of your physical health, but you can still be grateful for what you have left. And what if you lose more, and more, and more, if bad goes to worse? Perhaps at some point, all of us are reduced to despair, but my hunch is—and I hope I never need to prove this in my own life, but I may, any of us may—having lost everything, one may still be able to hold on to one’s attitude, one’s practiced habit of gratitude, of turning to God in Job-like agony and saying, “For this breath, thanks. For this tear, thanks. For this memory of something I used to enjoy but now have lost, thanks. For this ability not simply to rage over what has been taken, but to celebrate what was once given, thanks.”
 Tim and his wife stopped by before we left for Springfield. They are divorced but spending more time together than ever. It was about 10:30 am; they had just finished their Thanksgiving dinner at Perkins. She wore a beautiful thick purple sweater. Tim, as usual, was unshaven, but his smile still knocks down dinosaurs. The food, she said, “was delicious!” And the coffee even better!!
I stepped outside in my socks and got hugs from them both. They didn’t come in. They were headed back to their very small homes in Danville to watch TV the rest of the day, probably together. Tim loves to watch DVDs about trains, and read books about trains. She watches musicals. And they both watch basketball.
Tim’s been unemployed since he had covid for too long earlier this year, and his company let him go. It will be hard for him to find another job. In the last two years all four of their parents have passed away. Their parents were important to them. Now they are more important than ever to each other.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
 (Revelation 20, Psalm 84, Luke 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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