What if our present circumstances don’t leave us feeling honestly grateful?
When it comes to giving thanks, should we just just “do it” whether we mean it or not? What if the truth is closer to, “I never expected to be surrounded with such feelings of loneliness, fear, anxiety, confusion, and unanswerable questions?”
Seems as though, at the Bible’s own center and heart, it addresses such realism in what we call Psalms (the Songs of Israel). Doesn’t take long to see that these songs don’t regard giving of thanks as simply “the right thing to do.” (or even just a matter of obedience”.)
The songwriters of Israel often express so many different emotions, before finding reason to give thanks.
Or if they do begin their songs with a call to give thanks, as in Psalm 105:1, the songwriter goes on to show that he’s not going to just leave his singers with the challenge to “give thanks”. Instead, the author asks us to consider thankless moments and periods in history that give perspective to countless dark and bruised emotions:
Psalm 105:16 [The Lord God] called down famine on the land and destroyed all their supplies of food; 17and he sent a man before the Joseph, sold as a slave. 18They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons, 19till what he foretold came to pass, till the word of the Lord proved him true. 20The king sent and released him, the ruler of peoples set him free. 21He made him master of his household, ruler over all he possessed, 22 to instruct his princes as he pleased and teach his elders wisdom.”
Today, Egypt is once again in the news as that nation tries to find it’s way forward in a difficult period of reconstruction after the “undoing” of the Arab Spring. Yet in the process of a nation’s fears and anger about what many are calling the coup of President Mursi, there is a legacy to be remembered.
As Psalm 105 recalls, long ago, when God sent a famine on the land of Egypt, he also used the betrayal and enslavement of one of Jacob’s sons.
Joseph’s separation, terror, enslavement, and “bruising” abandonment must have come with countless moments of dark days and long nights. It would take a long time before Joseph’s God-given wisdom and plan brought smiles to the citizens of Egypt. Yet eventually, his troubles would help the world to see that the God of gods had chosen the family of Abraham not only for the honor of a chosen people, but for the good of Egyptian neighbors. It would take even longer to show how Joseph’s slow rise from the pit of his betrayal to Pharaoh’s most trusted assistant, would become part of another servant who would suffer far more for the sake of the whole world.
So how does all of this relate to our struggle to find reason to honestly thank God in the middle of “thankless moments”?
Is it coincidence that when we read and think about the dark days and nights that the God of gods has written into the history of the world, that strength seems to slowly flow into our veins? As we begin to think about that same God waiting for us to ask him to help us to believe, to trust and ….to wait on him… is it just a coincidence that we find ourselves quietly beginning to sense a grace that enables us to think of him as greater than our weakness, and as infinitely wiser than what we can’t yet see or feel?
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