What do you think might inspire an 18-year old, young woman, to write in her diary: "Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on earth, my eyes raised towards heaven, tears run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude"?
This isn’t a passage from a young girl's summer camp diary. Her name was Etty Hillesum, and the camp she speaks of is a Nazi death camp. What do you think might enable her to write that?
Or, what would inspire a middle-aged, man who was dying of cancer to say, when asked if his cup was half-full or half empty, that his cup was overflowing?
The middle-aged man was my brother, Craig. He was a non-smoking, healthy-living husband and father of two, who died about 7 1/2 years ago from cancer.
Something inspired unexpected responses from both this woman and this man. In the middle of the battlefield of what would normally be a dark, lonely, desperate, despairing situation, these two people defied their circumstances.
I want to spend a few minutes unpacking the ‘why’ of the remarkably positive perspectives of these 2 individuals. Both were people of strong faith.
Etty strongly identified with the Jewish people, while in her personal spiritual journey she was nourished by the Bible, Christian writers St. Augustine and Dostoevsky and she affirmed the Christian faith.
My brother, Craig, was a committed Christ-follower, very active in his church and in his community.
Now, let me ask you - do you think most of us live in a way that’s more resentful than grateful?
Chicago-based Writer Ray Hollenback says: “We’ve taught ourselves to be discontent. We are a people gone crazy with complaints, (but) through gratitude we can see the world through fresh eyes”.
Many are more resentful than grateful because we compare ourselves with those who have more, who've done more. But the truth, perhaps the hard truth, is that gratitude is a choice. It’s an attitude.
If I’m not happy with what I have, I won’t be happy having more. Contentment, trusting that where I am now I am in God’s hands, will lead to continuing to be content as life situation changes.
And I want to suggest that faith in the living God is the thing that transforms us and transforms our responses to the things that happen to us in life.
Our Scripture passages today helps us to unpack why God wants us to live with gratitude, and how a mindset and a lifestyle of gratitude has everything to do with shaping who we are, how we experience life, and how we will deal with tragedy or suffering, if or when it comes. This is important, because in this life we can’t get away from suffering.
Well…what does gratitude do? Psalm 100, perhaps the greatest psalm of gratitude in the Bible, gives us insight into this question.
Psalm 100
1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.2 Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. 3 Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Gratitude to God, such as that expressed in this psalm, firstly, keeps us connected to the truth that the Lord is God. No one and nothing else is God. Other things compete for our allegiance.
Idols are everywhere in our culture, from celebrities to musicians, from office towers on Bay Street to human philosophies, other things seek to dethrone God from our hearts, to make Jesus Christ of secondary value and worth.
But when we express our gratitude to the one true God, and when, as in this psalm, that gratitude wells up in us in worship, we make a radical statement that the Lord is God, that Jesus is Lord, and that all idols, anything else that could be mistaken for or worshiped as god, are falsehood.
We align ourselves with this truth, we align ourselves with this joyful reality, and we have peace.
God is God and we are not. That doesn’t mean we’re insignificant. We are made by God, woven together in our mother’s wombs, intended for blessing, intended for reconciliation with God, intended for salvation, for heaven.
We’re his workmanship, created to do good, created for good works that God long ago intended for us to do.
We’re made by God. People of God...you are His! We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. We belong together, walking as God’s people.
This is a tough message if we’re used to thinking of ourselves as number 1, as our own gods. To go from living with that illusion to accepting that we are the sheep of God’s pasture is a humbling thing, but again, it aligns us with reality as it is.
And so we live in shalom, we live at peace with ourselves and with God.
The psalm continues:
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. 5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Why do we thank God, how does gratitude infiltrate our lives to become a healing, thing, a beautiful thing?
We thank God because He is good. We thank God because His love endures for ever. His faithfulness does not stop.
We come into His presence, in prayer, in worship, gathered with God’s people, to celebrate His great love and mercy. To do this we have to do some good thinking.
We don’t blame God for the evil things that people do. We understand that human nature is broken, it is fallen, and the evil things that people do, they are responsible.
And God...well, he is impacted by our afflictions. He is full of compassion, He suffers with us. We don’t blame victims of crimes for those crimes, unless we’re not thinking clearly. And we don’t blame God who stands with the afflicted, for the bad things that happen to the afllicated.
We understand that God is good, and loving, and faithful, and we say so, we proclaim it in worship, and doing that we align ourselves with the truth, and so we have peace.
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
The passage from Philippians helps us unpack gratitude even more. Gratitude, we learn, is a remedy for anxiety, for worry, apprehension and fearfulness.
When we go to God, really GO to God with thanksgiving, bringing our prayers, our petitions and ALSO our worship and gratitude, God gives us something awesome in return.
He gives us His own peace, peace that transcends, that passes all understanding.
And that peace stands guard over our hearts and minds, so that we live in peace. Gratitude occupies space in your mind and conditions the heart toward openness to God.
Even when life is hard, even when life is dark and feels hopeless.
Shortly after his diagnosis with terminal cancer my brother Craig wrote me an email which I found the other day. In it he included the lyrics from a song by Michael Scott.
It goes like this:
Lord hold me in your everlasting arms
Enfold me in your everlasting arms
Lord bathe me in your everlasting Light
Lord lift me in your everlasting love
Home swiftly in your everlasting love
I'll go to where a temple stands upon a hill
In silence there I'll wait upon your will
Lord lift me in your everlasting arms...
In your everlasting arms.
My brother approached his death with faith and with hope, with prayer and with a deep understanding that he was held, he was uplifted and sustained, by the God in whose hands he had entrusted his life. His last audible words were: “Things are looking up!” A few hours later he was gone.
Etty Hillesum, while waiting for the inevitable in a Nazi concentration camp wrote about her situation, her captors and expressed the depths of her heart, in a journal entry on July 3, 1942:
“I must admit a new insight in my life and find a place for it: what is at stake is our impending destruction and annihilation.... They are out to destroy us completely, we must accept that and go on from there.... Very well then ... I accept it.... I work and continue to live with the same conviction and I find life meaningful....
“I wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been cut short. And that is why I must try to live a good and faithful life to my last breath; so that those who come after me do not have to start all over again”.
For Etty, this belief in the value and meaning of life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary became her guiding principle.
In the midst of suffering and injustice, she believed, the effort to preserve in one's heart a spirit of love and forgiveness was the greatest task that any person could perform. This, she felt, was her vocation.
Toward the end of her journals, Etty wrote: “God take me by Your hand, I shall follow You faithfully, and not resist too much, I shall evade none of the tempests life has in store for me, I shall try to face it all as best I can.... I shall try to spread some of my warmth, of my genuine love for others, wherever I go....
“I sometimes imagine that I long for the seclusion of a nunnery. “But I know that I must seek You amongst people, out in the world. And that is what I shall do.... I vow to live my life out there to the full”.
So may we be a people of gratitude. May our hearts, yielded to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, be ever thankful to the living God whose faithfulness knows no end.
May we be thankful for all that we have, and not resentful of what others have or of what we feel we lack.
And may our eyes be locked onto Jesus, fixed onto Him Who is the author, the completer of our faith, our salvation. He is, as He said, The Way, The Truth and The Life. No one comes to the Father, no one find peace that passes understanding, but through Him.
The Lord bless you and keep you this Thanksgiving. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
