Giving Thanks

I think it’s wonderful to live in a country that has a national day of Thanksgiving. Wherever Americans are gathered next Thursday they will most likely commemorate the day with friends or family and feasting. Whether staying home or going to Grandma’s, soldiers in war zones, or people traveling, studying or living abroad, there will be an attempt at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner and some moment to give thanks and remember our blessings. Giving thanks seems like a very appropriate way to end Ordinary time and begin the holy season of Advent and Christmas.

I read in a news article this week that English speakers say “thanks” and “thank you” up to 100 times a day. That seems amazing to me! The author said that our use of it could be quite confusing to people who come here from other countries. We apparently use it several times at the end of a telephone call, as a way to signal we are winding up the conversation. I paid some attention to my use of “thanks” right after reading this and noticed that just going into the post office caused a heavy exchange of “thanks” to and from people holding the doors open and between the clerk at the counter and I. Then I went to the grocery store where the checker and the bag girl and I thanked each other rather profusely for me buying groceries, they handing me a receipt and helping me out with my bags. Interesting. But I don’t think that this gracious use of “thank you” really makes us grateful people. I suspect we have instead a culture of saying thanks without paying much attention to whether we really mean it or not. Because when I’m at the post office, I’m not really thinking about how glad I am that we have an organized postal system that will deliver my package to the right person – I’m just acknowledging that the clerk handed me my receipt.

But developing a spirit of gratitude is really an important part of our spiritual formation. Because the difference between people who find ways to “always give thanks” and those who become bitter and hopeless people isn’t really in the circumstances of life, but in the way we view God and his action in our unique situations. Life is not always a bed of roses, as we all know. Those people who can find something to be thankful for in the midst of this broken world have a peace and a joy that is the best testimony I know. They have discovered that giving thanks changes things. As the writer Wendy M. Wright says,

“The act of thanksgiving presses the sweet nectar of joy from the husks and hulls of everyday life. We harvest the fruits that wait, heavy and ripe, to fall: the thousand small gestures of caring, the struggles with our shortcomings, the legacy of our faithfulness, the lessons learned from disappointments and failure. All of it, gathered up in gratitude.”

No matter what concerns press on you today, may you find that giving thanks is formative and produces a cornucopia of fruitfulness in your life. Please consider joining with us for our Thanksgiving Eve service on Wednesday night at 7. It will be a wonderful opportunity to give thanks and receive the Eucharist (which is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) together.