“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances...” 1 Thessalonians 5:16
That’s not exactly the way the bumper sticker reads, but perhaps we should start a new trend: Thanksgiving Happens! We know other “stuff” happens. We know the reasons to feel like, “Somebody up there must not like me.” But when those times come, we have reasons to say other things, hopeful things, and those reasons get us through.
I’ve been witnessing this all around me lately. A 44-year-old man in the church suffered a significant stroke two weeks ago. Stuff happened big time. But as he and his wife talked to me the other day about the night this occurred, they explained how they realized what was going on and called 911. It would have been very easy for hours to have passed. They gave thanks to God.
Another young man who had a tumor removed from his brain expressed thanks for what God is doing in his family through this experience.
A woman very close to me is mourning the death of her husband that happened quite expectedly. Yet through her tears she was giving thanks for how God was showing up in the comfort and help of so many people surrounding her.
And then closer to home, literally, is a 34-year-old man who has been staying at our house this week with his wife, mom, and mother-in-law, who is one of Susan’s best friends from college. He has a rare cancer that is in stage 4. One of the top doctors in the country treating this type of cancer is in Indianapolis, which is what brought them here. This was the week to prep which included harvesting stem cells before starting a very aggressive nine weeks of chemotherapy. They expected this to take place over 6 hours on Tuesday, but when they arrived, they learned his white blood cell count was so low, the process was going to take three days. It felt like stuff happened. But a few hours after starting the process the doctor came into the room with a stunned look. He said he had never seen anything like this in his 20-years. He began to cry. He said for some unexplainable reason they were able to get all of the stem cells needed. He told the man he was very, very special and hugged him. Needless to say, when I got home that evening, thanksgiving was happening.
These stories are not really about how God miraculously showed up—though don’t tell these folks otherwise! I share them with you because of people’s choices to claim how God showed up. We could always look around at what God did for someone else and feel cheated. But if we look for the ways God showed up for us, if we seek those things, we will find that alongside the “stuff” that happens to us, thanksgiving also happens.
And those reasons will keep us alive.