From Grumbling to Gratitude

Friends, I have a confession to make.  This past week I did not feel so grateful.  It’s Thanksgiving Sunday, the time of the year when we are all supposed to look around and notice all that we are thankful for.  I am not feeling so grateful.  Let’s start with Monday.  I was at school all day in Newton, picked up my son in Canton, and headed toward the Cape to come to Faithful Films.  Just before exit 3, the car beeps, the engine turns off, I glide into the rest area.  We are out of gas.  Life is too crazy to even remember to look at the gas gauge.    Not feeling so grateful about that.  Some of you may know that I have an almost-17 year old son, Sam.  Recently he had a minor incident that caught the attention of a very kind State Trooper.  Sam was driving on his Junior Operator license and the consequence of that is his license is suspended for 90 days.  Whoops!  Now I GET to drive him to school, IN BRAINTREE, every day…And hockey in New Bedford twice a week…and games all over New England on the weekends.  Am I supposed to feel grateful for that?  And my husband is a successful executive.  As a result he announced that he would be traveling away from home on a business trip and I wouldn’t see him for four days.  I am not feeling so grateful.  Add to that my school requirements.  This week I was supposed to read two complete books, a long article by Aristotle, several books of the Bible, 4 excerpts from other textbooks, write three reflections, and write two paper proposals including their bibliographies.  In addition I had youth group in Mashpee, and needed to prepare for today’s worship.  All by Friday.  Not feeling so grateful. 

Do you hear me grumbling?  I feel like one of the Israelites wandering in the desert following Moses around, complaining that they are hungry and tired and scared.  Those Israelites were hanging around in the desert for a loooong time.  The people of Israel are in the wilderness, and they’re grumbling. They’re grumbling because they’re hungry. As they note, they’re not in Egypt anymore, where they used to have lots to eat as they gathered around the loaves of bread and the pots of meat cooking over the fire.  And they’re supposed to be grateful?  What’s with that?  We’ve been dragged out here, following you around and we have less than we had as slaves?  And you want us to be grateful about that?  I have to drive a million miles a week so that I can work on my Master of Divinity degree?  And that takes time, gas, money, and energy.  And now I have no time to breathe.  And I have to give up time with my family?  I have to do that?  I am not feeling so grateful.

It’s like a poke in the eye with a hot stick!  I’m trying to keep my eye on the prize, but I can’t see because the prickly stick – the one that juts out into my path as I grumble along.  The one that I am tripping over in my yard as I try to get into the safety of my home.  It’s the stick that messes up my work area, that I drive over as I grumble up the hill to Andover Newton – that stick is in my eye!  And there’s the sticking point. (Get it?  Stick-ing point?)  We all have those events, circumstances, difficulties, and frustrations where we hear ourselves say “I am not feeling so grateful.” 

But the Apostle Paul says be thankful in ALL things.  The first letter to the Thessalonians says, “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing.   In everything give thanks:  for this is the will of God.” 

You are holding a stick that you received as you entered this morning.  What is poking at your soul?  What are the things that are making you grumble?  It might be something small, like wishing you could have stayed in your jammies this morning.    It could be something bigger, like concern over the current economic state.  Or yet even larger, an illness that has landed in a loved one’s lap.  It might be an existential question – what is my purpose here?  No matter how big or small that stick is, it’s still really annoying.   Take a moment now to feel the bark on the stick, feel its roughness.  Touch the end and feel its rough cuts.  Feel its pointed tip.  Smell it.  Does it smell like a piece of rotting wood?  It might.  Paul says give thanks for those things that stick you in the eye.   For that rotten, smelly dirt, thank you.   In everything give thanks.

That’s not easy.  What is a person supposed to do?  God’s will is for us to give thanks, to be grateful.  How can we do that in the face of what feels like disaster? 

Henri Nouwen, a theologian for our time, says “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work.”   

Jesus has an answer for that:  28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  When we share our burdens, our sticks, our pains, our difficulties and frustrations with Jesus through prayer, in silence alone or with others in a group or in church, Jesus will help us carry them.  Thomas Merton said this:  There is no leaf that is not in Your care.  There is no cry that was not heard by You before it was uttered.  In God we are home.

I invite you now, while the music is playing, to hold that stick, recognize it for what it is – a difficult, frustrating, annoying poke in your eye.  Then take that stick, and bring it to Jesus.  Lay it at the foot of the cross, and let’s imagine together what God will do with them.

When we share our burdens we are not alone in holding them.  When we hear other people’s difficulties, for some reason our problems seem to diminish right before our eyes.  And when those worries are minimized, we have taken the log out of our own eye, and we can see the world for what it truly is.  A gift.  Paul’s letter to the Corinthians says Let us thank God for his priceless gift!  When we can see the gift, we can be grateful. 

Now I can see that running out of gas perhaps was a gift from God that allowed me to stop rushing with my heart racing and pounding in my chest.  I was given 45 minutes with my son in a quiet, dark car, where I got to hear him joke and laugh about what had happened at school that day.  And in the help that I received from Leigh and Marcia contacting the other participants of Faithful Films I didn’t feel alone out on the highway.  The loss of the license is another opportunity for time with my son – time which is fleeting and will soon be changed as he enters adulthood.  The work my husband does allows me the opportunity to further my studies, and to help our children grow into the people that God wants them to be.  And the schoolwork that will continue to poke me in the eye, and the head, and the side, and the heart will help me to learn to be a better minister.  It will help me be the person that God wants me to be.

As you leave today, I encourage you to take one of the sticks from the piles with you.  Try not to take your own.  Take someone else’s burden with you; help them hold it. When you get home, sometime between now and Thursday, take the sticks, maybe find some others from your yard, and assign each of your burdens to one of them.  Then give the yoke of them to Jesus and watch how he transforms them.  Look for the places where God is present in the hard places.  And we can continue to build on the foundation of the strength of God.  You might transform those sticks into an artful sculpture that can go on your Thanksgiving table to remind you that God will turn all of our grumblings into gratitude.  Give thanks for all things.  AMEN.