Dear ______:
I’m sending this a bit early since I know you are heading out for the Thanksgiving break. I wanted to be sure it reaches you, especially since I know you are having a hard time just now.
Holiday gatherings can amplify those feelings (imagine how ambivalent the poor turkey is), but I hope there is also joy along the way.
And I hope you and your family can give some attention to the crucial thing: Giving thanks.
Giving Thanks
Giving thanks isn’t just the subject matter of our most popular national holiday.
Giving thanks goes to the root of human thriving: if you were to start a thankfulness journal and add half a dozen entries every day it might go a long way toward happiness.
Giving thanks is also at the very heart of living the Christian faith. If you’ve ever read any of my posts on the Heidelberg Catechism, you probably know how that 450 year old synthesis of biblical teaching summarizes the whole Christian life as thankfulness for what God has done for us in Christ.
But I’ve been writing to you about how to make sense of the Old Testament, and giving thanks is helpful there too. Let me tell you what I mean.
Psalm 136
In the Psalms, the great prayer book of the Old Testament, a number of the chapters are hymns that trace the history of God’s people. Some people (including C.S. Lewis if I remember correctly) don’t know quite what to make of these.
I think the key is found in Psalm 136. The historical psalms are about giving thanks.
Every verse of Psalm 136 has two parts:
- A declaration of who God is or something God has done.
- A refrain of thanks for God’s steadfast love.
The outline of the psalm goes like this:
- God
- Creation
- Exodus from slavery in Egypt
- Wilderness wandering
- Conquest of the promised land
- Ongoing provision
- God
That is the outline of the Old Testament up to the time of the Judges, starting and ending with the One who guides and governs Israel.
We get 26 moments from Old Testament history.
The Psalmist tells us that every event of that history has a meaning:
his steadfast love endures forever.
The better you know about the Old Testament story, the more interesting the Psalmist’s interpretation becomes.
Some of the things are obviously good and joyful. It is easy to give thanks for God’s own goodness, or the beauty of creation, or our daily bread.
But some of the events listed in Psalm 136 were a bit more complicated.
- The Exodus brought freedom but it was frightening and costly.
- The wilderness was a miserable time of grumbling and hardship.
- The conquest included struggle and war.
A whole lot of Israel’s history was frankly miserable — but according to the Psalmist, in one way or another, it all declares God’s steadfast love.
I think that is good news for us too. Our lives, in any given season, can be really hard slogging. But the meaning of the Bible’s story, at least as found in Psalm 136, is still the same:
his steadfast love endures forever.
Usually in the last class before Thanksgiving I have the students make this a litany of thanks. Each person names something they are thankful for. Then all of us respond together
For God’s steadfast love endures forever!
If you want to make your Thanksgiving table a time of giving thanks, give it a try.
But whatever you do, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!
Blessings,
Gary
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