Give Thanks for Life!

“Be always joyful; pray continually; give thanks whatever happens…” (I Thessalonians 5:18, NEB)

I wrote part of this blog last year on the day before Thanksgiving.  Since then much has happened.  What has intruded into our lives was wholly unexpected, totally unwanted and quite devastating.  Can I give thanks today for what has already happened and will I be able to give thanks whatever happens tomorrow?

No one is immune from the ups and downs of life.  Life is not a rose garden.  Life is not just chaos.  Life is a mixture of the two.  Douglas Malloch’s (1877-1938) little poem, “Thank God for Life,” helps me remember this  truth.

Thank God for life!

There! A meadowlark sings!  

Do you hear it?

For the sigh of the heart,

The contagion of laughter,

For the longing apart,

For the joy that comes after,

For the things that we feel

when we clasp, when we kneel—

Thank God for the sharing,

The caring, the giving,

For the things of Life’s living.  

Another poet, whose name nobody knows, but whose inner spirit everybody knows, will help me give thanks today and tomorrow…. 

Thank God for life!

E’ven though it bring much bitterness and strife,

And all our fairest hopes be wrecked and lost,

E’ven though there be more ill than good in life,

We cling to life and reckon not the cost.

Thank God for life!