Colossians 4:2
A Jewish mother is at the beach playing with her young son. She is standing on the beach not wanting to get her feet wet, when all of a sudden, a huge wave appears from nowhere and crashes directly over the spot where the boy is wading.
The water recedes and the boy is no longer there. He simply vanished. She holds her hands to the sky, screams and cries, "Lord, how could you? Have I not been a wonderful mother? Have I not given a tenth of all my income to you? Have I not tried my very best to live a life that you would be proud of?"
A minute later another huge wave appears out of nowhere and crashes on the beach. As the water recedes, the boy is standing there, smiling, splashing around as if nothing had ever happened. A loud voice booms from the sky, "Okay, okay, I have returned your son. Are you satisfied?"
She responds, "He had a hat."
Some people just don't know how to be grateful. Or maybe it's that they are only partially grateful. They show gratitude, but… They are thankful, but… There's that "but…" always in there that keeps them from embracing full gratitude. They know they received a certain measure of some unmerited gift, and they say thanks, but they also, in the back of their mind, think they deserved more. Or they can't get past their critical nature that keeps them from being fully thankful. "Thank you for saving my son from the wave, but don't you think you could have returned him with his hat intact?"
Being thankful means overcoming our resistance to not be grateful. It doesn't appear that we are born with the innate ability to say, "Thank you." When you were a child, and you had received something from someone, what did your mother always ask you? "Tell them, 'Thank you,'" or some such thing. We have to be told or taught to be people of gratitude. A boy said to his father, "Guess what? I can say please and thank-you in Spanish, German or French."
His father responded, "How come you never say it in English?"
It is remarkable, isn't it, that it's not in our human nature to be grateful. It's more in our nature to take things for granted. Or, out of some narcissistic sense of entitlement, to think that what we received was not all that great, and we certainly should have received more. Or to look upon the task of writing "Thank You" notes as sheer drudgery. Or we are so self-centered, how do you say "Thank you" to yourself? Like the guy who in his bedtime prayer said, "Dear God, is there some way you could help me, but make it look like I did it myself?"
There is a resistance there, isn't there, to not be a person of gratitude. Which means it has to come down to a conscious decision on each of our parts to be thankful people. Just google "quotes on gratitude" and you'll get list after list of such inspirational material about gratefulness. Some of them may fill you with the motivation to move towards being a thankful person. For a day or so.
William George Jordan once said, “Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good.” Why? Why are we so resistant? Why does it seem like we have to be convinced to become people of gratitude? And how do we become convinced?
The apostle Paul linked, in several letters, the attitude of gratitude with prayer. As our verse for the morning says: "Persevere in prayer, with minds alert and with thankful hearts" (Colossians 4:2, REB). Because having "thankful hearts" is so difficult for us as human beings, Paul emphasizes that to move toward that goal, we need to persevere in prayer and have our minds alert. Think of gratitude as both a process and a goal in the Christian spiritual life.
A thankful heart keeps a person alert in prayer, wrote Paul. Alert for what? Alert not only for God, but also for the gifts of God. Two women were walking through a park one bright Spring morning. One of the women was not much of a believer in God. The other woman was a believer. The non-believer, overwhelmed by the park's beauty said, spontaneously, "I'm so grateful for the beauty of this day."
Her believing friend replied, "Grateful to whom?"
That's the alertness that gratitude in prayer helps with. Maybe our problem is not that we are ungrateful, or that we are somehow beyond an exclamation of thankfulness. We just don't know, because of our lack of or limited faith, who we are supposed to be thankful to. We may be thankful for a number of things, but who are we thankful to? Life? The universe?
Alertness in prayer, Paul wrote, is what focuses our attention. Alertness to God. Alertness to the movement of God in our lives. Alertness to the blessings of God that come our way every day. Alertness to being aware of the many occasions during even the most ordinary of days, that would inspire us to say, "Thanks be to God." That is one of the main works prayer—to be alert every day for the instances when we saw the hand and movement of God, and we can't help but say, "I'm so grateful, and I know the One to whom I am grateful."
A man stood at the front of the congregation and humbly announced that he and his wife wished to donate $5000 toward a new stained glass window in memory of their son who was killed in Afghanistan. A woman in the congregation then nudged her husband and quietly whispered, "Let's do the same thing."
"What?" the husband whispered back. Our son wasn't killed in Afghanistan."
"Yes," she replied, "I know."
Both couples, alert to God, decided to do the same thing, respond in the same way, because they were thankful for two opposite reasons: a son's ultimate sacrifice in war; and a son who didn't have to be faced with such a moment. It is that prayerful alertness that has to happen in order that gratitude may be the response to Godly action, no matter what that action is.
That's where I got the sermon title for this series, "Grace descending; Gratitude Ascending." In other words, God acts first. God is moving about in our lives and in our world. We see that action, when we are alert to it through our praying. And once we see it, we respond. God's grace falls upon us like the sunshine. God acts first in some descending activity. Once we see it, once we catch a glimpse of it through our praying alertness, we respond with "gratitude ascending" to such a giving and amazing God.
Our verse for today had one more element of gratitude: "Persevere in prayer, with minds alert and with thankful hearts." The word is "persevere." To have an alert and thankful heart is not something that comes at the snap of the fingers. Such a heart can only happen when we persevere. Cultivating a thankful heart, alert to God, takes a lifetime.
One author was the guest of honor at a writer's club. He declined to give a speech, but agreed to answer any questions the club members might have. One lady raised her hand and asked, "Tell me, to what one thing do you attribute your success?"
The author paused for a moment and answered: "I can best answer that by telling a story of a Swede in Alaska. He was the owner of several rich mines, and all his friends wondered how he had managed to become so successful. So finally, one of them asked the Swede their question. 'Ay never told anybody before,' the Swede replied, 'but Ay vill tell you. Ay just kept diggin' holes.'"
I talked at the start of this message about our resistance to be people of gratitude and overcoming that resistance. Being an overcomer means having that perseverance in prayer. It means having not just the attitude of "keep diggin' holes," but actually doing the work. The Swedish miner didn't have good intentions about diggin' holes. He did it. And he kept digging, and he kept digging, and he kept digging.
The result of that kind of perseverance in prayer is intimacy with God. That's the only result of persistent prayer: growing an intimate relationship with God. All three of Paul's qualities work together to build that kind of faithful relationship. If you are keeping your mind alert for the activity of God, if you are responding to the activity of God with a grateful heart, if you are persevering in prayer, even in the times you don't feel like praying, when you just keep at it, you just keep diggin', the result is a long intimate relationship with God. When you then come to the end of your life, you know the one whose hands your are laying your spirit into.
Even when you get to the end of your life, whenever that is, because of your prayers and alertness and thankfulness, you can gratefully turn your soul over to our amazing God, with whom you have walked your whole life.
One grandmother was talking to her granddaughter. "I hope you like the dictionary app I got for your iPad for your birthday.
Her granddaughter replied, "Yes, and I just can't find the words to thank you."
All that we have to live a wonderful life has been given to us by our God-of-all-gifts. It is simply our task to receive those gifts, to recognize and be alert to those gifts, and then to find the words to let our gratitude ascend to that most amazing God.
No comments:
Post a Comment