Tuesday, October 8

Eight tiny truths about thankfulness and thanksgiving—

There is no room for discontent in a grateful heart. More than an inventory of the good things in our lives, thankfulness every day is a safeguard against bitterness, anger, and envy.
Philippians 4:6-7—Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Thank yourself from time to time. It is okay to be good to yourself and express gratitude for what you are able to do for yourself, your family, your parish, and community. You are a gift from God, redeemed by Christ, and powered by the Holy Spirit. That in itself is a major something to be thankful for.
Ephesians 2:10—For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

See with a light heart. In life, not everything is what it seems. Instead of seeing other’s shortcomings or the challenges of a specific situation, let your faith help you recognize the blessings and joys that are sometimes hidden to us by our propensity to see darkly. Let your heart light, as in joyful, and light, as in bright with God’s love for others and for yourself.
2 Corinthians 5:7—For we live by what we believe will happen, not by what we can see.

If you cannot find joy in certain circumstances, look for purpose. There are times when it seems there is little to be thankful for, but even the smallest bright spot can fire our imaginations to see a reason and a way to move forward.
2 Corinthians 2:14—But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.

Thankfulness is a recognition of dependence.“God loves a cheerful giver” and “it is better to give than to receive” have entered into common vernacular, but are biblical in origin. Being able to accept gifts with grace is a sign of a self-assured and humble spirit, and it affords others the opportunity to be manifestations of God’s love.
Corinthians 9: 15—You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

The more you choose gratitude, the easier it gets. Learning to notice good things sometimes takes effort, but like any habit or exercise, it becomes ingrained and easier with repetition.
Luke 6:38—Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

Thanks and action go together. When we take stock of our blessings, we can then use our gratitude to power generosity and care for others, and we become an exponential expression of Christ in the Gratitude feels good, but acting on it feels even better.
John 6:11-13—Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

The time for thanksgiving is always now. Don’t confine your expressions of gratefulness or generosity to a single day or season. Yes, there is a “ a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens,” but if we fill our lives and hearts with gratitude every day, we give less time and space for negative emotion and more energy for being God’s hands and feet in the world.
2 Corinthians 4:15—All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving:

Grateful for the Giver

Lord, as I participate in the all-too-consuming activities that require my attention today, I pray that I would not lose sight of You.
Give me this day a heart of gratitude.
Give me a heart of gratitude which looks beyond my appreciation
for things,
for comfort,
for peace,
for prosperity.
Give me a heart of gratitude which is ever and always
thankful for the Giver
thankful for the One who has provided
thankful for the One who, unlike His gifts, will never fade away.
Give me a heart of gratitude which refuses
to surrender to frivolous complaint,
to seek more than you have given,
to succumb to the annoyances and frustrations of this world.
Give me a heart of gratitude which is so filled with thanksgiving that worry and concern have no room.
Give me a heart of gratitude which remembers you as the present Giver who is my refuge and my portion.
Give me a heart of gratitude which cries out thanksgiving and praise even in the midst of anguish, pain, and frustration.
Give me a heart of gratitude which is capable of love, hope, and peace despite the tensions, hurts, and foolishness of this world.
Give me a heart of gratitude which is ever and always Yours. Amen.

-Dr. James Spencer (The D.L. Moody Centre)

October 6, 2020

I think I have mentioned before that one of my favourite books is The Christian Priest Today, written by Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, renowned for the size of his eyebrows! The book is collection of talks given to ordinands in their pre-ordination retreat as he prepared them for their great day. As I started my own journey to ordination back in the late 1980s, the book was highly recommended by the then Bishop of Rochester, Rt. Revd. Michael Turnbull, and I have used it regularly since then to remind me of what it means to be a priest in the Anglican Church.

In my sermon on Sunday I spoke about our commitment to the “Stewardship Life” and how we can sometimes feel disappointed when we see such a lack of response from those around us to the good news we proclaim about Jesus Christ. Well, blow me down if I don’t open Ramsey’s book on Monday to discover this little gem of encouragement, not just to me as priest, but to all of us seeking to promote the Gospel. I, unashamedly, quote directly from the book:

Amidst the vast scene of the world’s problems and tragedies . What a tiny difference it can make to the world that you should run a youth club, or preach to a few people in church, or visit families with seemingly small result. But consider: the glory of Christianity is its claims that small things really matter and that the small company, the very few, the one man, the one woman, the one child are of infinite worth to God. Let that be your inspiration. Consider our Lord himself. Amidst a vast world with its vast empires and vast events and tragedies, our Lord devoted himself to a small country, to small things and to individual men and women, often giving hours of time to the very few or to the one man or woman. In a country where there were movements and causes which excited the allegiance of many – the Pharisees, the Zealots, the Essenes and others – our Lord gives many hours to one woman of Samaria, one Nicodemus, one Martha, one Mary, one Lazarus, one Simon Peter, for the infinite worth of the one is the key to the Christian understanding of the many. You will never be nearer to Christ than in caring for the one man, the one woman, the one child. His authority will be given to you as you do this, and his joy will be yours as well.

Need I say anymore?

Prayer:

Today is the feast day of William Tyndale, Priest and Martyr, who made the first translation of the Bible into English, which made it accessible to all instead of the few. For his troubles he was hounded by the religious authorities both in England and Europe and in 1535 on this date he was strangled and burnt at the stake near Brussels in Belgium. The prayer for him today echoes the words of Archbishop Ramsey above:

Give to your people, O God, grace to hear and keep your word, that, after the example of your servant William Tyndale, we may not only profess your gospel but also be ready to suffer and die for it, to the honour of your name; through Jesus Christ, our Lord who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Thursday, September 17

Each time, the Lord said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(2 Corinthians 12:  9-10)

If I am honest with you (and with myself), Paul’s words – “when I am weak, I am strong” – sound completely counterintuitive, akin to saying “we have to go north to get south.” It also flies in the face of what society demands of us. Be strong. Stay strong. Live strong. Finish strong. Most of us are not good at saying “I can’t do it,” or “This is too much for me.”  And I venture few of us would say “now I am glad to boast about my weakness,” as Paul suggests.

Let me clarify that this is not a humblebrag like you might hear in job interviews: “My greatest gift is how humble I am,” or “My one shortcoming is I work too hard and I am just too darn self-sufficient.” Nor am I talking about the deep darkness of clinical depression, where one is truly stripped of a will to get up, or carry on, or even to go on at all.

I am talking about typical feelings of discouragement and the times when we get so caught up in the belief that we must handle everything alone that we forget to be simply a child of God in the purest, weakest, most vulnerable sense. We forget that we don’t have to figure it all out by ourselves. We forget to ask for God’s help. At work, when I fret about things, sending an anxious email or expressing a doubt about how some project will unfold, a particular colleague of mine invariably replies, in brilliantly reassuring understatement, “we will rely on God. He is quite capable.”

Obviously we can’t all curl up into the fetal position and assume someone else is going to make everything right. But we can lean on our capable God through prayer, worship, service, scripture, and faith fellowship.

Today’s lections include Psalm 105, sometimes identified as David’s Psalm of Thanksgiving. It begins with praise and thanksgiving for God, but immediately pivots to an injunction that I, for one, need to take better heed of:

Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.

As with the verse I quoted from Corinthians, we find here this strange juxtaposition of rejoicing and needing help, of “taking pleasure” in weakness. We also find here the rather persistent command: “seek the Lord… seek the Lord… seek his presence.’ In his commentary on this Psalm, 19^th century scholar and preacher, Charles Spurgeon wrote:

Seek, seek, seek, we have the word three times, and though the words differ in the Hebrew, the sense is the same. It must be a blessed thing to seek, or we should not be thus stirred up to do so.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, it is a blessed thing to need and seek the strength of God, and seeking is cause to rejoice. Recognizing we are weak makes us better Christians because the strength we receive from God is full of grace, and it equips us to respond appropriately to the slings and arrows of the world. Irving Layton captures this so beautifully in the poem “The Sign of the Cross,” in which he rejects the cross as a symbol of impotence or defeat, and calls upon it as “a spiritual power, forever beyond the reach of nails or bullets, tanks or bombers.” Look more closely at Paul’s words too: “That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. Knowing we are weak, we can be strong, like Christ, for Christ.

As a community, we have experienced some difficult times in the past several months. Last Sunday we took a step forward in the way we connect, while at the same time looking over our shoulders for that dreaded second wave of infection. Even now as I write, new provincial gathering limits seem imminent. Some of us may be feeling strong, as churches, offices and schools re-open. Others of us may be finding it difficult to rejoice or relax. Wherever you are on this continuum, I hope you find it possible and useful to be honest about the fragile spaces within ourselves and in our lives. In doing so, we make room for other people and God to come to us in acts of love and compassion.

Prayer:

Thank you, Lord, for all the glorious things you do. In my times of trouble, I will remember to search for you and for your strength, knowing that it will be there for me! May I recognize and rejoice in my weakness. May I profess and proclaim to all who will hear that you are my strength and salvation. Amen.