Just like we all have bellybuttons, all of us, at times, find it necessary to shop at Walmart. Not all Walmart stores are created equal, but for the most part, what you need will be available to you even if it means dodging pajama wearing shoppers and enduring long checkout lines.
For a preacher and writer, Walmart rarely fails to deliver sermon illustrations or Musing ideas.
Days after Halloween I found myself at Walmart with Brenda walking down the candy aisle where Brenda was scooping up highly discounted Halloween candy to repurpose as the contents of the dozen or so pairs of wooden shoes that will line our stairs in anticipation of children and grandchildren arriving on Christmas Day. Filling wooden shoes with candies, coins, and trinkets is a long Dutch tradition Brenda and our children heartily embrace.
Doing time in aisle 4 at Walmart, I overheard a 9 or 10-year-old boy talking to his mom.
“Mom, why are there so many Christmas decorations and hardly any Thanksgiving decorations?
“Honey, um…well…that’s because Thanksgiving is a day. Christmas is a season.”
While all people generally should be thankful, God’s people must be characterized by thankfulness. In our Bibles, we read the calls from the apostles to be thankful, we hear the prayers and praises of thankful saints, and we witness our Lord’s thankfulness, “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” (Luke 10:21). We Christians know by experience over the course of our lives and in hope of the resurrection that we have so much about which to be thankful.
But what about when thankfulness just does not seem to fit the moment, when life’s circumstances are so hard that giving thanks in everything because this is the will of God for us just seems impossible (1 Thessalonians 5:18)? How is it remotely possible to give thanks in situations where nothing is going right, where everything is wrong, where there is no prospect for immediate or long-term change, and where the pain of the hour is so intense? Here Matthew Henry is helpful.
While performing his pastoral duties, Henry was attacked by robbers. They stole his possessions and left him scarred. At the end of the day, he wrote in his diary…
“Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”
I confess I have yet to arrive at Henry’s thanksgiving disposition, but I want to get here. I hope you want to get there too. May God grant that we, our children, and our church will be characterized by thankfulness.
As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.