The soldier of time marches briskly past. Homecoming games have given way to playoff games; nasty-tempered hurricanes have forever signed their names to the guest book of destruction; and pumpkin pie will soon be the ½ off special at the local diner. But stop for a moment and catch your breath. Let’s count our blessings as that one ol’ hymn puts it.
We could be living in the bombed-out homes of many a war-torn country rather than in the bayous of southwest Louisiana, the rolling farmland of northern Alabama or wherever you call home. We could be riding horseback instead of modern horsepower. What a privilege to live in a modern world with its special joys, but, yes, with its own head-scratching challenges!
“In everything give thanks,” wrote the wise apostle Paul to one of his young congregations (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Sure, some things make it easy to be thankful. The wedding went off without a hitch, the kids have pulled up their grades, and that mysterious lump turned out to be benign. But the job is a hassle and the in-laws are coming for Christmas. How can we be thankful for everything?
When we look closer, however, the Bible doesn’t say, “Give thanks for everything,” but rather, “Give thanks in everything.” Sometimes the wedding photographer butchers the shot or promising students party hearty and lose their college scholarships. Sometimes the doctor has painful news to deliver. Some news is horrible. Some events are tragic.
Paul himself had recently suffered a split in his ministry team when he and his colleague Barnabas could not agree to take a young upstart, John Mark, with them on their future journeys. Paul had been beaten and imprisoned in a smelly, rat-infested dungeon that dripped with disease and despair. He had suffered and would continue to suffer greatly for preaching the gospel, yet he always found a way to encourage others to be thankful.
Then there’s my brother. Six years older and thirty more pounds of muscle. He never lost our pillow fights or pine cone wars. I never really had much of a chance. He was always bigger and stronger, yet twenty years later he sat across from a white-coated doctor who delivered a sobering diagnosis—Parkinson’s Disease. It eventually took his life.
No one wants to suffer. No one would choose suffering. “It’s definitely not what we would have picked,” my brother and his bride said not long after his diagnosis, “but we have chosen to be thankful. We focus on counting our many, many blessings, and we work at being joyful every day.”
In the midst of gut-wrenching tragedies or even simple daily annoyances there is hope. God delights in bringing great good out of awful circumstances. The Bible tells us that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28). We can be thankful then during the most trying times.
Give thanks!
Daniel McCabe