By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
How grateful are we? Really? I have a great life. A truly blessed life. It’s easy to be grateful to God for all the blessings my family experiences. Until it doesn’t.
What happens to our gratitude when suddenly the doctor says “cancer” or the police call to say someone was badly hurt in an accident, or you receive that “pink slip” at work?
Or what if God chooses not to answer that prayer you’ve been fervently asking for? What if the stock market tumbles and you see your retirement go out the window with it?
We live in a world where brokenness is just 1 day away, one call away, one thought away. How fast can that family drive to Thanksgiving dinner end when someone else’s car goes out of control and slams into yours?
Or do you find yourself on the receiving end of someone’s road rage? As I write this, I think about all the folks in the South who lost their homes, jobs, and lives to the hurricanes recently.
How can they be thankful when all their worldly goods just blew away? And their places of employment disappeared in the flood waters? And all they’d worked for was gone and no insurance to even cover their losses?
It’s easy to be thankful when our cup runs over but what about when it springs a leak, and we have so little left? One of the Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk, addressed this issue when he realized that for Israel to be redeemed by God, it would first have to be disciplined by Him.
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
(Hab 3:17-18) Israel would suffer famine, loss of their wealth, and the wrath of God, yet the Prophet sees reason to the thankful. He isn’t looking at the circumstances, he’s looking at God, his Savior.
He’s looking above or beyond the temporal losses to the One who will never abandon him, to the one who will carry him through the high waters and the wildfires.
We tend to judge everything from our circumstances, our limited perspective. Unless we have everything, we believe we are due, we see no reason to be thankful.
But the prophet saw it differently. We need to view what we have or don’t have through the lens of God’s plans. We need to look to what God is doing rather than to what we have or don’t have. Habakkuk saw the famine and losses as God’s redemption of Israel. A high
cost? Yes. But the goal was worth it. I had a hip replaced a decade or more ago. I’ll tell you now, it was no walk in the park.
The recovery left me in pain. I redefined that pain scale the doctors are always talking about. What used to be a 7 or 8, now became a 3 or 4 because 10 was replaced by 12 or 15.
That surgery led to 4 days in the hospital and 11 days in rehab and the whole experience seemed much too high a price for the ability to walk…at the time.
But, after recovery and more rehabilitation, walking without pain began to justify the hurt. What we need is a heart that is always focused on God’s work in our lives and those around us. Even when it looks covered up with bad stuff. God is still at work.
And what he is working towards is more of a blessing for us. God’s heart is to bless us until our cup runs over.
So, even when he is dumping the cup and cleaning it, and our lives don’t have all we think we should, just remember that his aim is to fill us up with so much joy and so many blessings that we will be unable to contain them all.
We can’t live a thankful life if we are constantly being shaken by our circumstances. We have to keep our focus on Jesus, the author and sustainer of our lives. The one who is always faithful and cannot be shaken.
Remember the words to the hymn, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:
”Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace”
Praying for you to be thankful for Him, your savior, above all else.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.