Introduction: Comparative Gratitude
Thanksgiving, like Christmas, is firmly woven into the American fabric as a tradition. I don’t mean this in a critical way – it is a wonderful occasion to gather families and to share a meal together (something rarer and rarer in this day).
Just as we cannot truly celebrate the meaning of Christmas without looking to the birth of our Savior Jesus, we cannot really understand what Thanksgiving is for without looking to the gracious God who blesses us.
· Lots of people really try hard to observe these two holidays without making them holy days. They do their best to play Santa and buy gifts for everyone in the family, but they ignore the Babe in the Manger who is God’s precious gift to us.
· At Thanksgiving, they cook a banquet for their family and friends, and may even share a sincere thought or two about all the people they are thankful to – their husband or wife, their children, the company they work for, the neighborhood, their nation.
· Without God at the center, there is something missing – they miss celebrating the SOURCE of all those blessings, and that source is God.
We cannot fully express our thanks to God only by comparing our lot with others. Seeing we are more fortunate than others certainly puts things in perspective, and helps us be more grateful for what we do have.
Some of the most ungrateful creatures on earth are American teenage girls. Having had two of them, I feel qualified to speak on the subject. Dear Abby published letters from two teenage girls one Thanksgiving. The first one came from one of these spoiled brats.
Dear Abby:
Happiness is knowing your parents won’t almost kill you if you come home a little late. Happiness is having your own bedroom...Happiness is getting the telephone you’ve been praying for...Happiness is having parents who don’t fight. Happiness is something I don’t have.
(Signed), Fifteen and Unhappy.
The unhappy fifteen-year-old’s letter to "Dear Abby" generated quite a response from both teenagers and parents. The most profound letter came from another teenager…
Dear Abby:
Happiness is being able to walk. Happiness is being able to talk. Happiness is being able to hear. Unhappiness is reading a letter from a fifteen-year-old girl who can do all of these things and still says she isn’t happy. I can see. I cannot talk. I cannot hear. I cannot walk.
(Signed) Thirteen and VERY Happy.
There is a noble saying that sums up this “comparative gratitude.” Seeing an unfortunate person, we say, “There, but the grace of God go I.” By comparison, we are blessed, but have we really thanked the God who gave us this blessing? Remember the Pharisee who prayed, “O God, I thank you I am not like this tax-collector…” (Luke 18:11)
Americans are pretty good at “comparative gratitude.” Missionaries and those serving in foreign lands remind us just how different life is where in the “third world” countries, and just how blessed we are to live here.
If we really want to live a life that is thankful to God, we have to get past our material blessings and get to the gracious God who gives us all gifts. We cannot just “look around” we also need to “look up.”
I. God is the Source of All Blessings Psalm 100:4
4 Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
It is clear that the writer of Psalm 100 is calling us to look up, and see the blessings of our God. Warren Wiersbe puts it well when he writes:
Some people are appreciative by nature, but some are not; and it is these latter people who especially need God’s power to express thanksgiving. We should remember that every good gift comes from God and that He is (as the theologians put it) "the Source, Support, and End of all things." The very breath in our mouths is the free gift of God.
Thankfulness is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, "I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy." But the mature Christian realizes that life is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from His bountiful hand.
Warren W. Wiersbe in “A Time To Be Renewed” Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 17.
As we mature in faith, we become more aware of our blessings, and of their source in God.
II. God Made Us Psalm 100:3
3 Know that the LORD, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Saying Thank you to God is expressing gratitude for life itself. Perhaps this is why it is more comfortable to thank other people, than it is to thank God. We feel differently about our mothers than we do other members of our family. We may have spent years growing up with a brother or sister, sharing a host of life experiences with them. Our mothers, however, represent the very gift of life. They carried us inside their bodies, They were there in the first moments of our life, giving birth to us, they nurtured us as babies and children.
Children often have the vertical perspective in thankfulness that we adults have lost. Joyce Hensley writes of her 8 year-old-daughter’s Thanksgiving essay:
My 8-year-old daughter, Christina, didn’t have any trouble completing the essay "about something you were thankful for" that her third-grade teacher assigned. Titled "Two People I’m Thankful For," she wrote: "I’m thankful for God and Jesus. I’m thankful for God because He created us. I’m thankful for Jesus because He died for our sins. God and Jesus are always there for us. They’re just like any other friend. If you’re thankful for pets, you’re thankful for God and Jesus because they made them. God and Jesus are pretty neat alright! Are you thankful for anything?"
Joyce Hensley, Christian Reader, Vol. 34.
Notice that Christina’s teacher asked the child to look horizontally – tell me about PEOPLE you are thankful for. Instead, Christina looked VERTICALLY. She spoke about her Lord and Savior, and her Heavenly Father!
More than a hundred years ago, Charles Haddon Spurgeon addressed this passage by warning those who were proud of their accomplishments. There are no “self-made men” Spurgeon said. Everything you have and everything you are comes from the provision of a gracious God. Since the days of Spurgeon, people have become more proud, not more humble. They trust in their own accomplishments. Today, many more fancy themselves to be “self made.”
III. God Is Good Psalm 100:5
Last year I read a very thoughtful message by Charles Holt entitled, “God Is A Good God.” Pastor Holt reflects on Psalm 100, verse 5, where it says
5 For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.
The preacher asked, in light of September 11th, do we really think that a good God would allow something like that to happen? That’s exactly the kind of question people who can only see thanks in horizontal terms would ask. For generations, God has been “blessing the socks” off America and Americans – with so much of everything we don’t have places to put it all. We have the best of everything material – food, clothing, housing, education, technology, medical care, on and on the list goes. But when there has been a loss or a hardship, the reaction of some is “how could God let this happen?”
People with a horizontal sense of thankfulness are happy and appreciative – as long as the basic material needs of life are being supplied. When they are not, they ask angrily where the Supplier is. Sometimes they have a great appreciation for the sacrifices of other people, and are deeply moved to thankfulness.
Job Did Not Look Horizontally, but Vertically
At the beginning of the Book of Job, Satan asks God to allow him to test Job, because the devil is sure that when Job’s many blessings are taken away, Job will curse God and die. You may remember that Job’s testing is done in three parts – first his possessions, then his family, and finally his health. With each testing, the devil proves to be wrong. Despite all the losses and hardship he suffers, Job does not curse God.
Job certainly could not have survived that ordeal without his faith being firmly grounded in the right place. If Job had merely been thankful for what he had, the devil would have been right – when those blessings were taken away, Job WOULD have cursed God and died.
Martin Rinkart (1586-1649) – Vertical Thanks Personified
In 1636 during the Thirty Years War--one of the worst wars in the history of mankind in terms of the sheer number of deaths, epidemics, the economic results--there was a godly pastor whose name was Martin Rinkart. In a single year, this pastor buried 5,000 people in his parish — about fifteen (15) a day. One of them was his wife. He lived with the worst that life could do.
But if you look in most any hymnal, you’ll find a table grace Martin Rinkart wrote for his children, right in the middle of that awful experience.
It is titled, “Now Thank We All Our God” one of our best-known thanksgiving hymns:
Now thank we all our God,
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mothers’ arms
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.
If I’d spent the year holding 5,000 funerals of the people I served, could I write for my children a song of thanksgiving? It’s an unusual thing that in history many who have the least to thank God about thank Him the most.
Joel Gregory, "The Unlikely Thanker," Preaching Today, Tape No. 110. Adapted.
Pastor Martin Rinkart and Job are the epitome of people who did not let their circumstances let them from affirming that God is good.
· They trusted in God’s goodness when their lives were full of hardship, loss and pain
· They testified to God’s mercy and grace
Hear another stanza Martin Rinkart wrote in his beloved hymn:
O may this bounteous God
Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace
And guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all ills,
In this world and the next.
His vertical faith and thanksgiving allowed Martin Rinkart to minister to those around him in circumstances few will ever have to face.
IV. The Gospel Perspective on Thanks
Because of the great sacrifice Jesus made for each of us on the cross, Christians should have an additional, very personal perspective on thanks. Max Lucado shares this moving story of sacrifice to remind us what Jesus has done in giving His life for us:
It’s difficult to find beauty in death. It’s even more difficult to find beauty in a death camp. Especially Auschwitz. Four million Jews died there in World War II. A half-ton of human hair is still preserved. The showers that sprayed poison gas still stand.
But for all the ugly memories of Auschwitz there is one of beauty. It’s the memory Gajowniczek has of Maximilian Kolbe. In February 1941 Kolbe was incarcerated at Auschwitz. He was a Franciscan priest. In the harshness of the slaughterhouse he maintained the gentleness of Christ. He shared his food. He gave up his bunk. He prayed for his captors. He was soon given the nickname “Saint of Auschwitz”.
In July of that same year there was an escape from the prison. It was the custom at Auschwitz to kill ten prisoners for every one who escaped. All the prisoners would be gathered in the courtyard, and the commandant would randomly select ten names from the roll book. These victims would be immediately taken to a cell where they would receive no food or water until they died.
The commandant begins calling the names. At each selection another prisoner steps forward to fill the sinister quota. The tenth name he calls is Gajowniczek. As the SS officers check the numbers of the condemned, one of the condemned begins to sob. “My wife and my children,” he weeps. The officers turn as they hear movement among the prisoners. The guards raise their rifles. The dogs tense, anticipating a command to attack. A prisoner has left his row and is pushing his way to the front.
It’s Kolbe. No fear on his face. No hesitancy in his step. The capo shouts at him to stop or be shot. “ I want to talk to the commander,” he says calmly. For some reason the officer doesn’t club or kill him. Kolbe stops a few paces from the commandant, removes his hat, and looks the German officer in the eye. “Herr Commandant, I wish to make a request, please.”
That no one shot him is a miracle.
“I want to die in the place of this prisoner.” He points at the sobbing Gajowniczek. The audacious request is presented without stammer. “I have no wife and children. Besides, I am old and not good for anything. He’s in better condition.” Kolbe knew well the Nazi mentality.
“Who are you?” the officer asks.
“A Catholic priest.”
The block is stunned. The commandant, uncharacteristically speechless. After a moment, he barks, “Request granted.”
Prisoners were never allowed to speak. Gajowniczek says, “I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me-a stranger. Is this some dream?”
The Saint of Auschwitz outlived the other nine. In fact, he didn’t die of thirst or of starvation. He died only after the camp doctor injected phenol into his heart. It was August 14, 1941.
Gajowniczek survived the Holocaust. He made his way back to his hometown. Every year, however, he goes back to Auschwitz. Every August 14 he goes back to say thank you to the man who died in his place.
In his backyard there is a plaque. A plaque he carved with his own hands. A tribute to Maximilian Kolbe – the man who died so he could live.
Max Lucado, Six Hours One Friday (Word Books)
Rex S. Wignall, Chaplain
Valley Christian Home
November 27, 2002
