Simple & Clear: a 2020 Thanksgiving
Every morning, I make the bed. It’s always been my one, sure daily homemaking accomplishment. Raising 9 kids can bring a host of chaos and opportunity for a day’s derailment. Making the bed just seems a simple and clear habit which puts at least one thing on track from the get-go.
If only the remaining moments of my days were as simple and clear. Sometimes the list of basic tasks seems overwhelming and then there’s the higher desire to glorify and serve God well. So easily, and without meaning to, I can slip into seeing my relationship with God as a means to helping reduce the chaos or to making better life decisions or improving myself. Recently my church’s small-group missional community of women read and discussed the book, “In His Image.” Early in this book, author Jen Wilkin asserts that “God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than he is with the decision itself,” and suggests the Christ-follower who wants to know God’s will for her life should shift from asking God “What should I do?” to asking God, “who should I be?” I’ve been considering this question more intentionally ever since – who should I be and how can I glorify God in who I am? While reading over Psalm 50 recently, verses 14-15 hit me equally hard. “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
Did you read that like I did? So often I think of glorifying God with a longer to-do list, but this list includes three very simple things: giving thanks to God, doing what I say I’ll do, and calling on God in the day of trouble. The result? “And you shall glorify me.” There it is. Calling on God in the day of trouble glorifies God. Doing what I say I’ll do, glorifies God. And God says, simply giving thanks to Him is one way to glorify him. Simple and clear. Romans 1:18-25 teaches that not giving thanks or honoring him as God is why God gave the people over to a debased mind and dishonorable passons. Those are some strong words and consequences for a thankless, unappreciative, grumbler to grapple with. Day to day, I tend to think of thanklessness as a rather minor offense, if any offense at all. I certainly do not usually consider it to be in the same category as lying, adultery or stealing. But in reading God’s word, it is easy to see he is pretty severe in his judgments against the sin of thankless grumbling. Deuteronomy 28, for example, is filled with blessings God promises to those who faithfully obey him, but then he states in verses 47-48, “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything.” Refusing to serve God with joyfulness and a glad heart led the Israelites at least, into being forced to serve an ememy – for the greater purpose of helping them to recognize the difference between the joy of serving God and the misery of living without his blessing.
Throughout this infamous year, which will certainly be written much about in future history books, this passage has come to my mind again and again while I have wondered what God has been up to throughout this problematic pandemic. So many blessings which were previously taken for granted, have been removed. We have all been reminded of how little we’ve appreciated God’s goodness in the simple pleasures of things like gathering in groups, gathering with family, watching a concert, or joining in corporate worship.
God has made it clear that he wants me to serve Him by simply being a person with a joyful and glad heart. On this 2020 Thanksgiving, as I reflect on the past year and move into the new, I pray we may all realize the significance and simplicity of the daily habit of being thankful to God on the other 364. Even more than making the bed.
Warmly,
Anne
Blog Archive - Original Post November 2020