Give Thanks Whatever Happens

In I Thessalonians 5:18,  it is written:  “Be always joyful; pray continually; give thanks whatever happens…” That’s a tall order.  “How can we sing God’s song in a strange land?” lamented the people of Judah long ago.  As they sat by the waters of Babylon that people wept.  They knew no joy.  They felt abandoned by the God of steadfast love and mercy.  They prayed, pleading with God to remember them.  They cried out, “Behold us and see our degradation” (Lam. 5:1).  They found it difficult to give thanks.  They hung up their harps because they felt they could not sing God’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137).   They were exiles.  Everything had been torn from them, land, home, family, neighbors.  They felt alone, utterly forsaken by God.  In that Babylonian captivity, the people hung their heads in abject despair.  They could no longer laugh, or dance, or sing their songs.  They could no longer give thanks for what was happening in their lives.

On this Day of Thanksgiving we, too, feel a lot of despair about the way things are going in our beloved land.  It is hard these days to sing “America, the Beautiful,” because we are not so beautiful right now.  Of course, we’ve never been all that beautiful at any time in our national history.  But it seems to me that we are in a kind of Babylonian captivity or exile just now.  We have forsaken so much of what made us a “light unto the nations.” We have become instead,  an ominous cloud that has darkened our homeland and cast a shadow over the entire global community.  It is almost as though the American dream has been led away to some “Never Never Land” in exile.  

Can we sing the Lord’s song in exile—in this new and strange America?  Can we be joyful?  Can we give thanks?  Yes, we can and we must!  The God of the Bible is present and active in human history and in all creation and this God is a God who acts (leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt and the people of Judah out of captivity).  Give thanks today to the God who liberates, who delivers, who loves, and is at the heart of all things.

I am grateful for Julia Mooney today.  She’s a school teacher in New Jersey who has worn the same gray, button-down dress that she has worn every day since school began in September.  She is trying to raise our awareness to the “culture of excess” that has filled our closets with unnecessary clothing (as well as the many other “excesses” that rule us).

I’m grateful, too, for Chief Justice John Roberts speaking up yesterday against Mr. Trump’s continual attempts to undermine the rule of law.  “We do not have Obama judges,” Roberts said, “or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.  What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”  

Do not hang up your harp and stop singing God’s songs.  Give thanks whatever may happen.  Trust that God will speak through “a Julia” and “a John” and liberate us from our captivity and exile.  

Dance then, wherever you may be, for I am the Lord of
the Dance, said He