Samuel Scull farms in the Arizona desert with his wife and children. One night a fierce desert storm struck with rain, hail, and high wind. At daybreak, feeling sick and fearing what he might find, Samuel went out to look things over and survey the loss. The hail had beaten the garden into the ground; the house was partially unroofed, the henhouse had blown away, and dead chickens were scattered everywhere. Destruction and devastation was everywhere around him.
While standing dazed, evaluating the mess and wondering about the future, he heard a stirring in the pile of lumber that was the remains of the old henhouse. A rooster was climbing up through the debris, and he didn’t stop climbing until he had mounted the highest board in the pile. That old rooster was dripping wet, and most of his feathers were blown away. But as the sun came up over the devastation and the eastern horizon, he flapped his bony wings and proudly crowed.
Somehow that old wet, bare rooster could still manage to crow when he saw the morning sun. There might not have been much to crow about but still, that old rooster found a way.
Many times it could seem to us that our world is falling apart. Often times we may feel that we have lost everything in our lives or at least something that is important, perhaps even the most important to us. It might even seem that, at least for us, because of our losses, the whole reason we celebrate Thanksgiving could be pointless. After all, there just isn’t much to be thankful about. Or, at least that is how we can look at things.
Our lesson this morning is a reminder to us, however, that being thankful should be something that we just set aside for one day, but instead should be an attitude that lives and prevails in us. The psalmist writes, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High...”
As I give thought to those early travelers to the Americas who celebrated the first Thanksgiving, it might well seem that there was little for them to be thankful for. One thing that I read this week said that at the most difficult period of that first winter there were only seven healthy people to provide care for all those who were sick and dying. Now they were facing another harsh New England winter. Would they survive? How could they survive in this place so far from everything they had known. And now, they were giving thanks? Thanks for what?
It seems to me that the pilgrims knew something that would learn about being thankful in difficult times. Why give thanks?
First of all we give thanks because of who God is. God is faithful to us. God stands by us and guides us even during the most difficult times. It may well be that it is difficult for us to see that God is present, but He is? We just need to look.
If you ever make a trip to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park you might notice some interesting things. Rings of tourists surround the geyser with their cameras and video cameras trained on a large hole in the ground. There is a large digital clock standing next to the hole predicting the time of the next eruption.
Often when there is time to wait people will pass the countdown in the dining room of the Old Faithful Inn overlooking the geyser. When the digital clock reaches one minute all of the diners leave their seats and rush to the windows to see the big event.
If you look around the room a bit you will notice that a crew of busboys and waitstaff come in to refill water glasses and clear away dirty dishes. When the geyser goes off all the tourists ohh and ahh, and take pictures. A few might even applaud. But over your shoulder, few of the staff, not even those finished with their work will look out the window. Old Faithful has grown too familiar. It has lost its power to impress.
Few things are more quickly taken for granted than God’s faithfulness. But nothing is more important. God’s faithfulness deserves our untiring praise and wonder. God’s faithfulness deserves our continual prayers of thanksgiving.
Second, we thank God because of what God does for us. “Look at me, Look at what I have done. Look at my accomplishments.” Those ae the things that many of us say. We say them quickly and we say them often. We say them way too often. We have forgotten about all the things that God does for us. We forget about the gifts that God gives s, including the gifts of those around us that touch our lives. Through all of these God’s hand touches our lives. Through these things we are blessed.
I read something some time ago written by a gentleman named Frank W. Mann Jr. He said, “An enlightening pastime is to make a list of favorite things that impact the senses... It sharpens our appreciation of these golden moments in time.
For example, on person’s list of their ten favorite sounds included: a distant train whistle, a mother talking to her baby, the crunch of leaves on a fall day, seagulls calling in the distance, a hound baying in the woods at night, the silence of a mountain lake at sunset, a fire on a cold day, a stadium crowd singing the national anthem, the screech of an airplane’s tires as they touch down, and his wife’s voice in the morning.
Go gave us our five senses and then he filled his creation with pleasures for each sense. God is exceedingly good. God touches us and blesses us each day. For it all, God deserves our thanks and praise.
Third, we give thanks because of what we can do. Yes, I did say we give thanks because of what we can do. I give thanks continually because I can preach. God has blessed me with a special gift. God has blessed each of us with special gifts and because of those gifts we have things we can do.
I once led a “Disciple Bible Study” class and we were talking about Adam and Eve and their experience with a piece of fruit. God came around later and told them to leave the garden. But, God didn’t leave them in the wilderness to totally fend for themselves. God provided them clothes made of animal skins and then God allowed them to till the ground. That might sound strange but its true. Think about this, if you were physically unable to work what would your life be like? What we can do can be viewed in no other way than as a gift from God. It is God’s grace alive and at work in our lives.
In the village of Chungungo in Chile something as simple as water is nearly as valuable as precious metal. The region is arid and parched, forcing the village to bring in water by truck from miles away. Until recently the average person could only afford four gallons a day. Compare that to the average American who uses ninety gallons a day. Buying even that small amount takes up to 10 percent of some household incomes. In Chungungo bathing was a luxury that very few could afford.
Then scientists experimented with a new system for obtaining water for the village. The 330 residents of Chungungo drink the freshest water any of them have ever tasted, coming from high above nearby El Tofo mountain. Under the direction of a Canadian cloud physicist, workers hung a wal of finely woven propylene nets. Each net is the size of eight queen-sized bed sheets sown together. Seventy-five such nets sift the clouds that sweep in from the Pacific Ocean.
A close look at the plastic nets revels propylene fibers meshed in tiny triangles. Like dew collects on grass, small water particles from the clouds collect on these fibers. It takes ten thousand of these water particles to produce on drop of water the size of a tear. Still, each net collects forty gallons of water per day. The seventy-five nets on El Tofo sift a total of three thousand gallons of water daily from the drifting clouds and fog.
Sometimes our lives feel as dry and parched as the soil around Chungungo. What we need are spiritual water nets. God gave to we humans the ability to think and reason and work to overcome even the most difficult of circumstances. For such as this God deserves our thanks and praise.
A Wine company advertised in “Newsweek” magazine, “The earth gives us wonderful grapes. The grapes give us wonderful wine. The wine wins us new friends. Thank you, earth.”
How easy it is to give credit and thanks to everything and everyone but the real source of al our blessings! God deserves our thanks.
For some of us there may be many reasons to be thankful this coming Thursday. Perhaps we may even see it as the best year we have ever had. For others of us, it hasn’t been the best of years. We had an evacuation, there was a hurricane, there has been recovery. Gas prices have been up most of the year and now the stock market is down. Many of us have great concerns for the future.
For me personally this has been a year of ups and downs. Of course all of the reasons that I have already mentioned but that is by no means all. I had to move this year, and that is always stressful and now I am dealing with an illness that has me worried about my future. Still at the same time however, I got to move to a new place where I have come to know many new friends and have already had many blessings. And, for whatever else this crazy illness might bring, I know that God is with me and some how, some way, God is going to see me through that too. I recognize that I am a blessed man. I have a talented staff, great congregations, many friends, a wonderful wife and a loving family. I am blessed and I am thankful, not just this Thursday, but every day.
You know, that rooster probably looked pretty comical in the midst of a very traumatic situation. Still, he went about doing what a rooster does best, he crowed in the new day. Perhaps he didn’t want to, after all, with all he had been through, who could blame him. What on earth did he have to crow about?
When devastation and difficulty hit our lives perhaps we don’t feel very thankful. Yet giving thanks to God should be what we Christians to best. Did Paul not say, Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
May we be thankful in the good times and the bad, for God is always with us and because God is with us we always have great reason to be thankful.
