11-19-12<\/p>\n
I had planned to write today a version of my annual Thanksgiving message \u2013 subsection B, the rant about how \u201cThank You\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019re Welcome\u201d have become abused, misused, and confused terms these days. So, you will have a year to notice how people might still utter \u201cthank yous\u201d but how the responses are, these days, almost always \u201cThank YOU,\u201d or \u201cYou bet,\u201d \u201cSure thing,\u201d or \u201cNo prob.\u201d All of which invite us to think about the value of sincere thanks and heartfelt responses, social habits, and the meaning of it all. If there is a meaning.<\/p>\n
There is a meaning, but it is worthwhile to think about social graces that expire, and why.<\/p>\n
Instead, today, I was knocked off course by an e-mail I received from a friend; in fact, several recent e-mails. They have touched me, especially as I make the obvious link to the essence of Thanksgiving: giving thanks.<\/p>\n
I have been rocked recently by professional and personal events, the personal matters mostly due to (and not to be mentioned in the same breath as) health crises of my wife. She has been in the hospital for almost three weeks, and this is, I think, her seventh hospitalization this year. We have had blessings and travels during the \u201cgood\u201d periods lately, but this year has been visited by several mini-strokes, pneumonia, kidney failure, and grim diagnoses about her 17-year-out transplanted heart.<\/p>\n
Nancy\u2019s faith is strong, but I think she is getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. Through it all, the support of family and friends has been a comfort. And a hundred little things that are not little: the concern and indulgence of my agent and publisher; prayers from unknown and surprising places; and so forth. People who do not just say, \u201cI\u2019ll keep you in prayer,\u201d but, having the face-to-face opportunity, pray right in the moment. Friends who, when they say they are willing to drop everything and help, mean it; and we know they mean it.<\/p>\n
And the e-mail I received this morning, from a friend who did not even know of Nancy\u2019s recent crises:<\/p>\n
Dear Rick, I’ve been praying every day for you and for your family. I know I didn’t write to you after your grandbaby died, and I feel bad about that, but I don’t want you to think that means I don’t love you, because I do. It’s easy to pray for you. I would find it hard to forget!<\/p>\n It’s getting to be that time of year when I start to long to reach out and connect with loved ones. Normally I don’t write to people because I just don’t have words! Or I’ve used them all up, probably. That’s the price I pay for teaching online.<\/p>\n But something about the season of Advent changes all that. Words start to flow like milk and honey! \u2026 If you have some time, I’d love it if I could call you and have a good talk. If not, don’t worry, I get that! But consider this message a hug and an expression of genuine friendship and great regard. My brother in Christ! It’s just so great that God loves us, and love is just such a cool thing!<\/em><\/p>\n Well. Is there better medicine that that? And I don\u2019t mean to disparage the precious notes and calls from other friends, from brief \u201cI\u2019m thinking about you,\u201d to long letters, all precious. A friend in Arizona with whom (I regret) I don\u2019t speak to as often as we used to, reminds me that Thursday of every week he prays for me and my family. Another friend is bursting with news she knows I want to hear, but gives me space and a prayer that the space is occupied with blessing. Reaching out in such ways is what friends, especially Christian friends, DO.<\/p>\n In the family of God, NOTHING is more precious than the fact of family: we are brothers and sisters in Christ, children of a loving God who has graced us with salvation and a promise of eternal life, with Him in glory.<\/p>\n And part of that blessed truth is that we have a promise… but we don\u2019t have to wait for the promise to fulfill itself in Heaven. We can know it now, and in the midst of trials, share the love of Christ in a way that the world can hear about but never FEEL, Hallelujah.<\/p>\n This is something we don\u2019t often enough gives thanks for in and of itself; at least I don\u2019t. It is a wonderful gift of God, and truly a gracious thing, because we hardly deserve it. While we were yet sinners, God visited humankind and sent His Son to assume the guilt for our sins. On this Thanksgiving week, I picture it like this: our natural selves rebel and insult God in many ways, uncountable times, and God\u2019s response is almost like \u201cThank you.\u201d Huh? \u201cI am sending my only-begotten Son as a sacrifice for your transgressions. Believe on Him.\u201d<\/p>\n That is not exactly a \u201cThank you,\u201d of course, But as His \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d before we even repent, it is a form of advance-\u201cThank you\u201d… and it merits from us a lifetime of continual \u201cThank YOUs\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019re welcomes,\u201d and praises and gratitudes. And thanks. Of the most profound sort.<\/p>\n What my friend this morning showed is the proof that Christ lives in us. That is to say, such expressions as she made is evidence of the Spirit-filled heart, for we are told that in such things it is not us, but the Christ who lives within us who enables us to do such things.<\/p>\n I am reminded of the mirror-image, an insight Nancy had during our hospital ministry after her transplants. When Satan attacks us, it is not us whom he hates \u2013 for, clearly, he has little regard for us \u2013 but he hates the Christ within us. The more Jesus in our hearts, the more he attacks.<\/p>\n Abraham Lincoln set aside the third Thursday of November for the nation to gives thanks to God. He summed up sentiments of previous leaders, and anticipated powerful proclamations from some of his successors in the office. Indeed we should give thanks to God for our bounties and harvests, our material blessings. But Lincoln also admonished, and people like my dear friends remind me, that we must remember, and cannot help be thankful for, the Author of those blessings. How He works in our lives; how He lives in fellow believers; how He can, and should, inhabit our works.<\/p>\n Thank God.<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n The moving hymn \u201cNow Thank We All Our God,\u201d appropriate this week and every week of our lives, has an interesting story behind it. The best hymns do. It was written by Pastor Martin Rinckart during the Thirty Years\u2019 War. In the Saxon town of Eilenburg, the site of battles and pillage and plagues, he was the only clergyman who survived to minister to the ravaged populace. At one point he performed 50 funerals a day, and the year he wrote this hymn, 1637, he performed more than 4000 funerals. Nevertheless, in the midst of it all, he wrote \u201cNow Thank We All Our God\u201d for his family. Was there any way to summon peace and praise in such circumstances, except by the Holy Spirit? \u201cNun Danke alle Gott\u201d was used as a theme several times by Bach, and was \u2013 and should be \u2013 a vital component of church worship ever since. It was translated into English by Catherine Winkworth in 1856.<\/p>\n