In 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation designating November 26 of that year as a national day of thanksgiving to recognize the role of providence in creating the new United States and the new federal Constitution. In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued another Proclamation:
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
What is the occasion of our thanksgiving in 2020 when there is so much over which to be anxious? Psalm 30 gives us some insight into the motivation for thanksgiving. It emphasizes three themes.
First, there is a life-changing crisis. The psalmist experienced the depths of despair. It may have been an illness, a near-death event, physical debilitation, a tragic loss, financial strain: “you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit.”
Second, the psalmist cried to the Lord for help. He is restored, healed, made whole.
Third, he attributes his change of fortune to the Lord. He did not just get better, pull himself up out of the grave, or work things out. It was the Lord who was responsible for the dramatic reversal from death to life: You have lifted me up, you did not let my foes win, you healed me, you brought me out of the grave, and you restored my life. It was you – not me or anything else that changed my life. All of God’s people are invited to join in the celebration. “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble.”
Thanksgiving becomes real when we tell our story – what happened and how God changed our lives. In Psalm 30, the writer admits that he once thought nothing bad would ever happen to him; he was secure because the Lord had made him strong as a mountain. But in a heartbeat, God hid his face from the psalmist, and life fell apart.
“When I felt secure, I said,
‘I will never be shaken.’
O Lord, when you favored me,
You made my mountain stand firm
But when you hid your face,
I was dismayed.”
Thanksgiving is not possible without acknowledging our devastation. If we did not cry to God when we are overwhelmed, if we did not see the hand of God in the circumstances, there is no reason to thank God now. God is responsible for the storm in our lives. He is sovereign over all events. We cannot have genuine thanksgiving without grieving our losses. Depression, despair, anger is the backbone of thanksgiving. Our songs of gratitude are hollow and limp – sentimental platitudes without a faith spine – unless we recognize God’s hand in our experience. There is no Promised Land apart from the experience of bondage in Egypt. There is no Easter apart from the Passion of Christ.
“For his anger lasts only a moment,
But his favor lasts a lifetime;
Weeping may remain for a night;
But rejoicing comes in the morning.”
Thanksgiving is the expression of joy after sorrow.
“You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
It is easy to move from complaint to praise when God changes my circumstances just as I want: My child recovers from leukemia. The doctor pronounces me or my spouse cancer free. The hurricane veers west and misses our home. Paralyzed, my friends carry me to the Lord, and he heals me. When God works in our lives according to our dreams, we are grateful. But our definition of healing is narrow and deeply flawed, limiting gratitude to a thin slice of God’s work in the world. God sometimes says no to our prayers. Instead he gives us grace to live with what we have.
God answers our prayers for help, sometimes just as we hoped, other times not. But even when we get what we prayed for, we often emerge from the storm soaked to the bone and shivering for weeks from the experience. How can we give thanks when doctors are not able to fix every birth defect or the damage caused by all those seizures in the first months of life? Some children are not going to get well – or get better. Severed nerve cells, as of yet, do not grow back together. God may grant remission from cancer or complete healing, but the scars do not go away – nor does the fear of relapse. Some grandparents face the challenges (and blessings) of parenting their grandchildren. For many, their circumstances, their lives, are not going to get better – just more and more complicated and difficult. As long as our thanksgiving only acknowledges instances when we get what we wanted, our gratitude is stunted and incredibly painful to those to whom God says no. Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that thanksgiving is not blind to the suffering of life.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, … harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict. …Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field…. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People…And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
We can be thankful because by Christ’s wounds we are healed. He suffered and died so that we might live forever. His body was broken in combat with evil so that we might be victorious in the battles of life. He turned our wailing into dancing and clothed us with eternal joy. This is good news even in the midst of suffering.
(Acknowledgement to Glenn Pemberton, Hurting with God, 175-189)
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