Confessions, Frustrations, & Thanksgivings: Why Thanksgiving 2014 is Vitally Important

Colossians 3: 16 - "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. " (NKJV) 

I have to confess that I have been weary… so very weary this week.  At times I found it difficult to sleep when I was supposed to, and to stay awake at other times.  Lately my mind has been alternately caught in a torrent of angry reds and melancholy blues that seem to wash over me and steal my breath.  They leave me gasping, and heaving for what?...  Air? Hope? Love? Mercy?  Maybe all of these.  I hear so much venom in people’s voices and see it dripping from the words they write as they express this opinion or that.  Why have we as a society seemingly lost the ability to treat one another with basic kindness? 

In the course of a week, I have witnessed the destruction unfold in a suburb of St. Louis, and seen up close the devastation wrought by a single horrible incident that resulted in the loss of the life of a young man; irrevocably changing the course of so many lives around the principle characters who are at the center of this tragedy.  With these occurrences also come the inevitable proclamations of right and wrong, what we should do’s, and what went wrongs.  Then more attacks begin…  “He did this because he is a [fill in your angry adjective here].”  “That person needs Jesus!”  “It’s because this country has turned its back on God and now we’re being judged.”  “It’s God’s will.”  Or more often by contrast: “There is no God and this proves it.”  “Where is your God now?”  “Seems like a loving God would have stopped this from happening.”

UUHHHGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

I’m not going to be saying anything here that hasn’t been said many times before, but it’s worth another try…  WORDS HAVE POWER!  They are the only tools that, without touching a person’s physical body, can destroy their lives.  When used with malice they bring destruction.  When bandied about without thought or care, they cause illness and even death in a person’s spirit.  Words, like so many other tools that we have been given, aren’t intended for that purpose.  But society, or culture, or whatever we choose to call the loosely gathered federation of persons who have to live in proximity to one another by default (something I’ll come back to address later), has raised their misuse to an art form.  The ease with which we tear each other down is staggering in its shear efficiency.  But then I suppose that destruction has always required less energy than construction.

I guess my next question would be, “How do we change that?”  And it is almost an absurdly simple response but here it is… speak kind words.  Choose to consciously use these powerful tools to build, to challenge, to encourage, and to empower transformation.   (I told you it was a simple response, even if I immediately “unsimplified” it with the long words.) 

I am reminded by my earlier comment about it taking less energy to destroy than to build, of my Granddaddy Cooksey and how he may have proved that wrong.  When Granddaddy had begun to slowly loose function with the onset of Alzheimer’s I happened to live near he and Grandmother.  One Saturday, my grandmother asked me and my friend Will to take down an old aluminum porch roof that Granddaddy had built years before on my great grandmother’s trailer.  Will and I said, “Sure”.  I mean it was aluminum, how hard could it be?  It took us literally 2 days to get that roof down and apart.  See when Granddaddy had built it, he had taken the time and care to make sure that it would last.  That it wouldn’t blow away in a storm, or give way under the weight of leaves or small tree branches.  And though it had been there for some 30 years, try as we might, Will and I couldn’t get it to budge.  We actually had to get Granddaddy in a fairly lucid moment to talk us through the procedure.  But my point is this… when tools are used in the right manner to build, what is accomplished is sooooo much harder to take apart. 

What if we used our words like that?  What if we used our relationships like that?  What if we built one another up and strengthened one another, and cared for one another enough to invest in each other so that we could withstand the evils of this world that will buffet us?  Words do indeed have power.  They have the power to give and affirm life.  They have the power to strengthen.  They have the power to anchor us in positive ways and places that will keep us from “blowing” off course. 

Now for those of us who call ourselves disciples of the Living Christ, what if we use God’s words like that?  What God reveals in Word and the words of the Incarnation is intended to build, strengthen, nurture, empower and transform creation for the purpose of resurrection and renewal.   The entirety of scripture from Genesis to Revelation is one long story of love’s enduring power, strength and ultimate victory.   And God chose to share this revelation through imperfect and impure hands and minds as well as through the use of words inspired by an ideal of what creation was intended to be and what it can be through loving renewal. 

That’s not an attempt at glossing over the tough parts of scripture, or the parts that some may find offensive or “hard”… but simply a realization that the fundamental component in every telling and retelling of these stories of faith is this: ultimately love conquers evil.  Are there consequences for actions?  Certainly.  Will every person in creation always make good and loving choices?  No.  But the love of the Creator, our Heavenly Father, cannot be overcome by hatred nor destroyed by evil.  And our love for the one we call Savior should be something that makes us strive to love those around us in the same way in which we have been loved.  Unreservedly and without conditions attached.  You are loved whether you accept that fact or not… whether you get everything right, or never get anything right.  Whether or not you respond to or return the love it is yours, plain and simple.

If we use this most powerful tool which God has given to us to build a community of people who know what it is like to be loved, then those same people will be more inclined to share love in turn.  Each time the tool is wielded in the right way, the community becomes stronger and less likely to be as easily torn down when evil assails it.  And society, or culture, those people who we live around by default become something more akin to a family… people who you may not always agree with or like, but who you live with because you want and choose to be in relationship with them because of your love for them.

Happy Thanksgiving.  May the action of giving thanks for the love we have received, be the fuel we need to love courageously in His righteousness.  May our thanksgiving include thanks for His ability to love the least lovable among us.  Oh wait that would include us wouldn’t it… Thank God.