With Thanksgiving still a ways off, I’m having trouble making a list of the things to be thankful for. Perhaps I shouldn’t confess it, because God’s blessings are always plentiful, but my list seems anemic, a bit of candy confection rather than well-grounded thanks. Maybe that’s why for a couple of months I’ve been singing a line from Irving Berlin, “If you’re worried and you can’t sleep, try counting your blessings instead of sheep…”
For many years our Illinois Baptist communications team has produced a November essay in the way of Joan Beck. She was a Chicago Tribune columnist who for thirty years penned a beautiful Thanksgiving tribute in free verse to the big achievements and scientific discoveries of the year, with some personal blessings from her life. It was artfully punctuated by lines from famous hymns that revealed her faith, and always ended with the inspiring climax from Romans 8, “What shall separate us from the love of God…”
But this year, everything I want to put in our 2024 version hasn’t happened yet. The end of war in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan hasn’t happened yet. The end of human trafficking and drug trafficking and gang violence hasn’t happened yet. The end of cancer and Covid hasn’t happened yet.
And even closer to home, the church hasn’t called a pastor yet, restoration after illness for many friends hasn’t happened yet, and the salvation of lost relatives hasn’t happened yet.
You get the idea.
Beyond the usual gratitude for God’s provision and our general well-being (which should never be taken for granted), I want to pen the lovely lyrical list of big-ticket items. But as I write, most of them haven’t happened yet. That’s why Thanksgiving must be an act of faith.
Paul encouraged his churches to give thanks “in all things,” but giving thanks for the things still on our prayer list requires a different set of spiritual muscles. This exercise forces us to the look at the world with hope, even in times when the horizon is dark and hope is hard won. Hope is always tied to things we cannot yet see, as in Hebrews 11:1 where we are assured that the blessing is coming. Beyond that, the writer says we are fully convinced of the fulfillment of God’s promises; we hold the conviction God will provide.
Even as the Pilgrims survived a long winter on a few kernels of corn each day. Even as our own promise of blessing seems for the moment a bit more candy cornucopia than the outpouring of God’s great provision. We still hold the conviction that God’s love endures forever. And willingly we wait.
Hope is tied to conviction, and faith is proven in waiting. Because the blessing is coming, with the usual nod to Joan Beck, we can say…
As we gather together to count the Lord’s blessings… 404 years after the first Thanksgiving Day… the list is long of things I want to be thankful for, that in my time-bound existence simply haven’t happened yet. But…
Immortal, Invisible, God only wise… knows their fulfillment in his plan that brings healing and restoration and peace and salvation and all those blessings that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him.”
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come… with outcomes and inventions and revelations sight unseen, we can still attest in our annual crescendo “that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Amen.