Thursday Theological Thinking

Thanksgiving has been on my mind a lot this year. I imagine it's because of my musings on where we were going to seat our enormous crowd this year and whether everyone in the Sleepy clan would get along with the Pre-Sleepy clan. And the other myriad details that go into planning a meal that will, hopefully, appeal to everyone - even the picky ones among us.

Now that the majority of the details have been settled, I still find my mind circling around to Thanksgiving. Except now it's Thanksgiving in general, the action of giving thanks, that has become a preoccupation.

This new preoccupation started the day after the elections, when my heart was heavy and anything but thankful. Into my mind swarmed 1 Timothy 2:1 - 6 "I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone - for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men - the testimony given in its proper time."

I had to go and look it up to be sure I was remembering it correctly; I was sure that God wasn't telling me to be thankful for Jim Webb or Nancy Pelosi or, good grief, Hillary Clinton? And yet it's there, in black and white, we're to pray for everyone in authority and not just requests and intercession, but also prayer of thanksgiving with the ultimate goal being that each of our leaders come to know the Truth. Now, when it seems that so few of our leaders on either side of the aisle put Truth, the Truth of God's Word and the unchangeable tenants held therein, at the front of their jobs, praying for those leaders to know God and know the truth is more important than ever.

Contemplating this, I tried to think of how I could phrase a thankful prayer regarding our current government, knowing that so many of them advocate legalizing (or maintaining the legal status of) sin. Knowing that they feel man's law trumps God's law in every situation, and would classify God's law as a work of fiction, given the opportunity. Most of my efforts ended up backhanded non-thanksgiving prayers that on the surface sounded good, but with minimal scruitny crumbled.

This took me back in mind to family Thanksgiving meals. Almost every year at some point in the meal, mom would make us go around the table and say five things for which we were thankful. My sister and I would roll our eyes and try to be the first one so that we could list each family member and "dibs" those - because generally you weren't allowed to repeat what someone else had already mentioned. I expect the utterances that we managed did not seem like thankfulness to my parents.

I arrived at the conclusion that forced thankfulness is always going to be insincere. While you may be able to cajole someone into the utterance of thankful words, you can't force a thankful spirit. Yet it is an attitude of Thankfulness that permeates Paul's writings and the Psalms. Thankfulness that very often came in the midst or on the heels of adversity.

This is a fairly incomplete thought, because I'm not sure how you cultivate a spirit that is thankful, no matter what. But I suspect it comes from practice.