Thanking and Giving 11/19/44
Scripture: Psalm 103
Text: Jeremiah 33: 11; “Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts, for he is good, for his loving kindness endureth forever.”
Certain characteristic marks should distinguish a Christian. One of these characteristic marks is a continual attitude of Thanksgiving. Over and over, through the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the note of praise is sounded - the Psalms are full of it. The prophets lift it, even when they are denouncing evil and thundering out a warning. The early disciples sang amid their worldly troubles.
The attitude of thanksgiving is necessary for the appreciation of life’s richest blessings. Grateful people are appreciative people. Grateful people draw friends.
Many years ago, Henry Ward Beecher, great preacher of his day, said, “If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me that there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes and search for them with my clumsy fingers and never detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep it through that dish of sand, and that magnet would draw those tiny particles of iron to it through the power of its attraction! The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find in every hour some heavenly blessings, only the iron in God’s hand is gold!”
Well, apparently some of the finest things we seek are to be found by the exercise of the fine art of thankfulness!
In the literature of the ages, Thanksgiving is characteristic to religious spirits. The Psalms are ploughed full of it. To Jesus’ lips rose the words, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” [Matthew 11: 25]. “In everything give thanks,” wrote Paul, assuming that the true Christian temper is the mood of thanksgiving. And Paul is right. The Christian is the inheritor of great salvation. It is his in prosperity or adversity. It is not dependent on his material, but only on his soul. Paul witnessed this truth when, out of adversity and trial he could write in several Epistles, with gratitude, “In everything, give thanks.”
[I Thessalonians 5: 18].
I have a notion that that might be the burden of his counsel if he were advising us today: if he were speaking to anxious mothers and fathers who think of their boys in distant battlefronts on land and sea - even to those who have suffered the loss of their loved ones. I feel sure that he would be saying to our nation - “In everything give thanks” - what nation has better reason than ours to be grateful?
Back in the Old Testament, another great soul who suffered severely for his convictions and had no prosperous or easy life, suggested that the real ground for thanksgiving is in the things that endure. It was the great prophet, Jeremiah, who said, “Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for he is good, for his loving kindness endureth forever.” [Jeremiah 33: 11]. Prosperity is transient. So is adversity. Either may be here today and gone tomorrow. So may be elation or anxiety. But there are some things that are enduring.
Some years ago, many of us used to sing lustily the Sunday School chorus: “count your blessings; name them one by one; count your many blessings; see what God hath done.” Let us now count just a few of the things that endure, that are blessings for all.
1) Consider for one thing, the lovingkindness of God which endures forever. From earliest creation, God has nurtured mankind with a loving care that passes understanding. Of course man may ignore that love - and does. He may disregard its promptings and go counter to them. But God continues it. God may send a Christ to show people a new and better way, and men may mock that Christ through the years and crucify him. Yet God redeems man by that same crucifixion. His loving kindness endures forever. And for it we give thanks.
2) For something stern which endures, we may give thanks - for the execution of divine justice. Said Robert Louis Stevenson: “I believe in the ultimate decency of things; aye, and would believe it if I woke in hell.” This interpretation of history is not always easy. It frequently appears for an unbearably long moment that the unrighteous prosper at the expense of the righteous. Most of us think that we have seen and heard of instances in which wrong seemed to triumph. But the longer view of the historian insists that while the “mills of the gods grind slowly,” they “grind exceedingly fine.”
Thomas Carlyle observed, “Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed, some day or two, some century or two, but it is as sure as life, it is as sure as death! In the center of the world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God. The great soul of the world is just.”
Another one voices it in similar words: “One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with distinctness: that the world is built somehow upon moral foundations; that in the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run it is ill with the wicked.”
Sometimes we need the tonic of remembering this long-term truth. When evil seems so much greater than the good we seem able and strong enough to do, we grow discouraged and wail “how long, O Lord, how long” - or some modern, perhaps cynical, equivalent. We would do better to remember that the intent of God in good; that there is an ultimate decency in his creation; that divine justice is continually executed whether we see it at the moment or not; that it is God’s business, that we don’t have to be God, but we do have to stay in line with his purposes; and that it is enough for us to work with all our might in that line.
For this ultimate decency, this long-run triumph of justice, we may give thanks.
3) Consider another enduring thing. There is a creative urge in man which never allows him to grow satisfied with things as they are, but insists on continual improvement. One of the chief characteristics of man which distinguishes him from the animals is the constant urge to improve upon his conditions. He is continually dissatisfied with things as they are and in pursuit of visions of a better way. Not everyone has the same restlessness to the same degree; but it is nonetheless unmistakably characteristic of mankind.
We ought to give thanks for it. By its promptings, legal slavery has been uprooted, and man has gone a long mile toward freedom for all; woman has new rights won in the new world; the conditions of living have improved tremendously and give promise of further improvement if man can keep pace morally with the speed of that improvement.
Perhaps no people have better cause to be thankful for the creative urge - or more solemn and urgent need to be grateful for it, than we who live in the United States of America. At this season of the year, we remember the expression it took among the Pilgrim Fathers who were profoundly dissatisfied with their old life and set sail on August 20, 1620 from Plymouth, England. They traveled in a little 120-ton-capacity ship that tossed around on the Atlantic for two months in making the crossing, and landed them away north of their intended destination.
Some of us have crossed an ocean in our time in great liners equipped in stream-lined comfort. We travel with speed and in the certainty that a navigator will find the port, with no deviation, in any kind of weather. Food is like that at a good hotel; service likewise. Now we contemplate crossing in a few hours by air above the waters which those pioneers took two months to cross. We can hardly begin to imagine their discomforts on the Mayflower.
They arrived in the autumn and barely had time to settle before a winter, cruel in climate and disease and insufficient in supplies was to settle upon them. Half of the colony died during that winter. It is said that, on returning in the spring, the captain of the Mayflower offered free passage to anyone who might wish to return. But none sought space! They had come to carve out a new way of living. The greatness of this country is a result of their creative urge to seek its shores, and also of a creative urge of their descendants to create a way of freedom and a nation of justice and righteousness.
But that urge is not found solely in America. It stirs in men everywhere as citizens of the world. Major geographical frontiers are disappearing. The frontiers of national boundaries are steadily ever harder to maintain. Men and nations are tired of war with its death and destruction, from which but little good results, except the opportunity to try again.
In all lands people are expecting of their leaders that a way of peace shall be found that shall be more than an armistice, while the vanquished have time to build strength and resources to begin again. And we are glad for this urge. But this is a realm where our thanks must be transposed into living and giving. No peace can be written merely because people demand it. The demand must be backed up by the price to be paid for peace. The price is high. Said General Sir Archibald Wavell not long ago, “Think what a world we could make if we put into our peace endeavors the selfsame sacrifice, the same energy and the same cooperation we use in the wastefulness of war.”
Peace, and a better world-wide order, are not going to come when some people get into a position to hold a club over some other people, in order to make them behave. The better world can come only by our giving of the best that is in us to the world that needs that best. [insert Judd’s statement.]
We people of Christian faith believe that God has revealed to us a way of living that saves us from sin; that has the power to create not only saved individuals, but a transformed community of believers. If we believe that faith is above everything else for us, do we not also believe that it is best for others, too? If Christ transforms us, does he not transform others? If love is a law of life for us, is it not the same law for others? If God is righteous and just toward us, is he not also righteous and just toward others? Ought we to share the “good news” with hosts of others?
I believe, deeply, that the various branches of the Christian Church can perform one of their greatest services to the world by strengthening the whole program of Christian missions to all the world. Our own American Board of Missions is looking for more than a hundred people urgently needed to carry on a mission of assistance through the service of doctors, nurses, teachers, ministers, agriculturalists, social workers, and other well-trained people. Not only can such people carry our good will to others, but they can ably learn what friendship and understanding others can give to us.
Our hearts may very well give concrete expression to the creative urge in giving more of ourselves and our substance through benevolence channels to such a work.
This Thanksgiving Day will not find us with everything as we like it. Some things we deeply dislike! But life is never exactly as we would have it. Our business is to give thanks for what we have and are and can be, and to be taught by the necessities of the hour how great are the resources of God!
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 19, 1944