The Worth Of Knowing

I was sitting at a table in our church’s youth group room. We had a bag of jelly beans in front of us and were instructed to drop one into a styrofoam bowl as we shared something we were thankful for. I watched the jelly beans begin to pile up as my friends thanked God for a house and a shower and shampoo and the like.

“Wow, I guess you don’t have lot to be thankful for?” a friend gently prodded.

“No, I do … it just … seems,” I struggled to put the feeling into words, “shallow.”

Maybe I was not thankful enough? But what about people who don’t have the things my friends listed? How do they give thanks?

Several years later I lay curled up in bed as the early morning sun shone through the curtains onto my puffy tear stained face. Jesse woke up and looked at me with concern.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I said quietly.

“You should have woke me up,” he said as he reached over to pull me close.

“There was nothing you could do. You wouldn’t have slept all night,” I said holding back tears. He had been up late comforting me anyway. There didn’t seem to be anything that he could have said that would have changed the depression (which at the time I never would have acknowledged as such) that hung over me.

“Why don’t you think of things you’re thankful for?” he suggested gently.

My body became tense. I lay silent.

“There’s got to be something,” he encouraged, “I’ll start …” He listed family and Jesus and our apartment and our washer.

Tears rolled down my cheeks. We had all these people and things, but none of them helped me want to go through another day. With every item Jesse added to the list my anger and helplessness grew.

“… my mind lurches toward the obvious: this is not enough. No matter how carefully I reframe painful experiences with a positive lens or focus my attention on tiny grains, I cannot make thankfulness the solution.”

⁃ Kate Bowler, No Cure For Being Human

Something about giving thanks that I feel like I’ve missed:

I don’t need to find silver linings in my circumstances or emotions around them in order to “be thankful in all circumstances.” We don’t need health and wealth in order to get through painful circumstances with thanksgiving. I need communion with Jesus.

Lament (and not just the neat and tidy kind that lasts for a moment) and thanksgiving are both good, biblical ways to go before God. They’re not opposed to each other because they lead us to the same place: worship at the throne of God.

If we look at King David, Job, and the prophets we see this pattern in Scripture: they pour out their confused, angry, fearful, shameful thoughts before God and God, in his perfect time and way, reveals himself. God reveals himself in such a way that leads them to humility, worship and genuine, contrite … thanksgiving.

The solution to getting through painful experiences while maintaining a healthy relationship with God not only thanksgiving or only lament. It’s honest communion with God. It’s there we find a God who is completely powerful, wise, and good. It’s there we can find a Savior who both sympathizes with us and intercedes for us. It’s there we find reason for thanksgiving.