As I gathered my wits that had scattered to the four winds, I wondered if I had imagined what I had just heard. The morning national news caster had just plainly stated that "The time to be thankful is now over". How on earth is it that we are about to enter into the Advent Season and the time to be thankful is over? Isn't Thanksgiving the starting gate for a season of extra thankfulness?
I spent the rest of my stationary run thinking about how lost our world truly is. The world tells us to take one day a year and be thankful. The world tells us that even that might be too much. Maybe just take part of a day. Hit those stores early! Get the best deals! Slowly our focus is chipped away. And suddenly we find ourselves looking in the wrong direction. One step at a time we have walked away from what we need to be walking towards. We never seem to do it in big swooping choices. Its the little things. It's one by one adding too much to our schedules so that we have no time left to rest. Its adding so many people to our shopping list that we can not do anything BUT shop during the holiday season. Its trying so hard to make the holiday special that you never really have time to actually enjoy it. There are just so many ways to lose focus and lose thankfulness.
This year I have decided to rebel against the misconception that the holidays just have to be crazy. I am choosing rest. I am choosing to be thankful for what I have around me. Thankful for the events around town that we get to experience this year in the states. I will shop. I will be busy. But not so busy that I forget what it is all about. As Christians we are called to a lifetime of thankfulness. All those years ago a baby was born in a manger with one purpose and one purpose alone. He was born to die. He left the comforts of heaven to come to earth and sacrifice all that he had so that we could join Him one day in heaven. That kind of sacrifice deserves more than one day of thanks per year.
So what do we do in a world that is not compelled to be thankful? What do we do with those "one day of thankfulness a year is sufficient" wanderers? How do we live our lives without condemning those around us and turning them off from the gospel message? I believe it is all about our attitudes.
A very wise friend once told me an analogy that helped me greatly in how I view people who are not believers. She said, "If a person walks up and steps on your toe you might yelp and even get upset at their carelessness. However, if a blind man walks past you and steps on your toe you would have grace and immediate forgiveness because he could not have possibly seen you there."
As believers we are the person who gets stepped on. Sometimes it is by fellow believers and sometimes it is not. My toe was stepped on by that news caster. He stomped on my foot so hard I almost ended up as treadmill road pizza. I wanted to scream. I wanted to let him know how wrong he was. But expecting others to live out a thankfulness that is not their own is unfair. With out those attitudes of thanklessness there would be no contrast to the genuine thankfulness. Without that contrast how would the world see their need for true thankfulness?
We need not impose our standards upon the unbelieving world. They are not living a life of thankfulness for a Savior that pulled them from the pit. They have not yet experienced the miraculous grace that overflows our hearts with thankfulness. To expect them to act thankful would be disingenuous. It would be asking them to be fake.
With that said we now can not be disingenuous ourselves. We can not live a life pretending to be unthankful so as not to offend those around us. Instead, we need to live out our thankfulness in a way that is appealing to those who do not know true thankfulness. We need to stop preaching to others what they need to do and start doing it ourselves. Let's BE thankful. Let's act thankful. Let's let the world be drawn to our thankfulness. In that, we can entice the world to come and find out what is different. Let's share with the world what we have in our hearts that makes us thankful. Then, maybe we can distract someone from their holiday preparations long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to do a work in their lives. We can draw people in with our thankfulness rather than push them away with our judgmental attitudes.
Let's live the change we want to see in the world. Let's bring about a conversation that will give people a reason to be thankful. Let's give that news caster a new story to tell in his broadcast. And let it not be a story about a girl who half killed herself listening to his broadcast.
