A lot of times when I sit down to write a reflective blog, I have to be in just the right headspace to be inspired.
The older I get, lol, the more difficult this becomes! The "right headspace", it turns out, is prime real estate and it's not often one finds themselves occupying a suitable abode on that particular block!
Despite my original hope that I would become more capable of deep and reflective thought as I age, I find the opposite is true.
Instead, the only things I have become more capable of as I age are A.)overeating, B.)procrastinating, C.) watching Catfish marathons in the overnight hours on MTV and D.) forgetting song lyrics to radio hits I had previously had memorized for a decade or more.
If the writers and thinkers I admire most suffered these same setbacks, lol, they certainly never indicated that they fought any of these particular battles in any of their works.
Robert Frost, for example, probably never opted to sit up in his living room overnight in his underwear with his German Shepherd and split a box of Cheezits while surfing Disney+, did he?
And I'm certain he wouldn't opt for a third viewing of "Raya and The Last Dragon" over creating some new prose!
Two roads probably never diverged in THAT yellow wood, did they Bob?
With Thanksgiving now upon us, I find I am without excuse.
It seems completely unthinkable that I could let the occasion pass without remark.
I am, after all, a person who has been the recipient of immense blessings - both known to me and unknown to me!
In a nation where people are losing their jobs, I remain (for now) gainfully employed.
In a country where the minimum wage keeps people living paycheck to paycheck and barely able to take care of their monthly bills, I remain capable of doing so! I even get to partake in the joy of helping others to live less in a state of lack after my own electricity, groceries, etc are taken care of!
*Sidebar: Being married to a hunky paramedic who also brings home a paycheck and often times floats me some dough to fill my car's tank up with gas is a great aid to me in my ongoing quest to bless others with the fruits of my labor.*
Without Zach around to make sure I have a safety net, it'd be a lot more difficult to part ways with the funds in my bank account when God calls me to help out a friend or stranger in need!
Why, I even find myself blessed and provided for to the extent that Zach and I can afford to travel and visit places outside our everyday, normal surroundings on a regular basis.
I feel blessed beyond measure every time God permits me to travel to a place I've never been before... or to revisit a beloved destination that I've been to several times! ...to take it in, breathe deeply and bask in the knowledge that Jesus is Jesus everywhere. 😊
In the last few years, I've been able to confirm that Christ is accessible on a cruise ship to Mexico, on a beach outside of Los Angeles, in the Puget Sound with a family of orcas teaching their young to hunt seals in the dense mist and, most recently? In the shadow of Cinderella Castle as you watch fireworks explode in the sky with your niece and nephews at Magic Kingdom!
I look back on the sum of my experiences and on how undeserving I am to have them, let alone SHARE them with a partner!
So, what then is my freaking problem?
Shouldn't someone as blessed as me be more than capable of finding something relevant to say on the occasion of Thanksgiving???
I mean even as young as two and four years old, my nephews were able to wax philosophical about THEIR Thanksgiving blessings! (See 01:38:00 seconds in where Baby Benjamin reveals his item that he's most thankful for is... um... "seatbelts". Lol!)
To grease the wheels in my forty year old brain (and get the darned thing to do something more productive than try to come up with answers to the riddles that hint at the true identities of contestants on The Masked Singer), I have spent significant time the last few days trying to ask myself to identify a beloved Bible character or two who might have some insights into what it means to be thankful.
And in so doing, I have determined that David is my go to guy for an example of thankfulness in the Old Testament...
...Peter (a.k.a "Simon") is my go to for an example of thankfulness in the New Testament...
...and David Foster and Catherine McPhee are, without question, the true identity of Banana Split on Masked Singer... 😊
(Sidebar: Video representation of Simon to be added later in the blog in lieu of GIF representation)
Since we're talking about King David... and since I already introduced one tale of Cute Nephew Antics into this entry... I have to tell a quick story about my oldest nephew, Caleb.
He's been in either his Grandma's church Sunday School class or else in Children Church sessions that she's led and taught since he was SUPER little.
Around the time that he was four or five years old, he attended one of Grandma's classes where King David was the main character in the story being examined for the day.
Grandma had a felt board that she put cloth characters on as she told her Bible stories and she explained that while David grew up to be an Israelite King, he started out as an everyday, young shepherd boy.
Caleb, I'm told, hung onto every word as Grandma explained that when he was a kid David had once summoned the courage and confidence to slay a giant warrior! Caleb & his classmates were told that it was due to having had to protect his father's sheep as part of his regular work on the farm at home that he'd had the courage to engage with Goliath!
The shepherd boy with the slingshot stepped out in faith to defeat a giant in part because he knew that God had had his back a million times before when he had gone up against bears and lions that were looking to make a meal out of his father's livestock.
My nephew was apparently just enthralled by this story.
As soon as he and I interacted following his discovery of this information, Caleb launched into his own retelling of the epic tale!
"Uncle Nick, did you know that in the Bible there was a little boy who killed a giant?"
I attempted to play dumb.
"No way!" I remember saying, "How did a little boy know that he could shoot a slingshot well enough to kill a giant?!?"
Caleb looked me dead in the eye and said, "Cuz! He had killed other stuff with his slingshot and that was his practice! He watched his dad's lambs! It was his job! And sometimes to keep them safe he'd have to shoot at animals that were trying to eat them!"
"What kind of animals???" I said, feigning ignorance.
And here's where Caleb got away from the official narrative a bit...
In an attempt to capture my imagination to the same extent that the story had captured his, he says "...like bears and lions and sharks!"
Lololololol...
I have attempted to convince my mom at least 1000 times since that discussion that she needs to create a felt shark to put up on the cloth board in order to properly show the range of biodiversity that found its way onto young David's Kill List... but she still hasn't done it. Lol!
While it may be an exaggeration to say that God helped David kill sharks as a boy, it's definitely not an exaggeration to say that he helped him to avoid those that smelled the scent of his blood in the water once he assumed the role of King of Israel.
As a boy, David had to avoid lions, bears and giants. Those are the stories we know about him that are most familiar.
But as an adult king? He had war lords, corrupt political adversaries and his own lust to do battle with!
You can't sling rocks at your Big Boy problems.
Our most vicious adversaries don't just just fall down dead with one pebble launched to the forehead.
David wrote a whole collection of poems to keep his heart and mind centered on God as he battled both his literal enemies *and* the psychological opponents he found himself up against in his reign as King.
Whereas I find myself saying thank you to God for trips to Florida with my family and a steady job, David's gratitude was rooted in escaping assassination attempts and in experiencing forgiveness for having seduced another man's wife... and wanting to keep her for himself to the extent that he arranged for her husband to be killed in war!
Pretty obviously, King David had a better grasp on what it means to be thankful than what Nick The Sleep Tech does.
In one of his poems (also known as "Psalms") that I read this week, David illustrates that being thankful isn't just about verbalizing gratitude.
According to David, Thanksgiving is about two things that maybe we don't really think of it being about.
Those two things?
Prayer & Sacrifice.
In Psalm 116 he talks about his love for God, his Provider.
He recounts how God has shown him mercy when he didn't deserve it, delivered him from literal death and blessed him even in the aftermath of terrible decision making.
He's done that for me, too. And I'd about bet He's done it for you. 😉
So if there's anyone we should take our cues from this Thanksgiving, David is probably a prime candidate.
Look at how he opens this particular prayer from Psalm 116...
...Legitimately, I could go through that opening line by line and do an entire blog entry for each
phrase found there. No joke. In fact, maybe that will be a New Year's resolution for something to
work towards accomplishing in 2022!
While I ponder that, let's move on to the part of the Psalm that struck me as most relevant to the
holiday theme we're attempting to stay true to in this entry - THANKGIVING. 😊
12-19What can I give back to God
for the blessings he’s poured out on me?
...I’m ready to offer the thanksgiving sacrifice
and pray in the name of God.
Picture it.
This Thursday... Thanksgiving.
You and your family are seated around the dining room table at Grandma's house or Aunt Linda's 2 bedroom apartment or whatever and someone brings that delicious looking bird or ham or turducken or tofurkey out on a platter and sits it down in the middle of the table.
*Sidebar: My apologies to you in every regard if you're one of the unfortunate people in this world who is at Aunt Linda's eating a tofurkey - 😟*
But back to the matter at hand!
Once the family is assembled around the meat and the potatoes and the dinner rolls and the pumpkin pie, what it is that typically happens before everyone loads up their plates and starts stuffing their faces?
If your family is anything like mine, there's usually a prayer that gets said.
If you're the person that has the honor of leading that prayer at your family's Thanksgiving table, I want to challenge you to prepare your heart in advance for that exercise this year.
Access your inner David and say to yourself first, "What can I give back to God for the blessings He's poured out on me?" and then make up your mind definitively to sacrifice your pride and actually GIVE YOUR FAMILY THE CHANCE to EACH pray a heartfelt prayer of Thanksgiving.
Let's be real...
It doesn't take much sacrifice of pride to pray the prayers that most of us end up praying on Thanksgiving, does it?
Whoever the person elected to pray that prayer winds up being?
They usually stand up, clear their throat, invite everyone to fold their hands and bow their heads and then say something pious and rehearsed before everyone echoes their "amens" and transitions from their 90 second stance of solemn prayer to a gluttonous horde of Tasmanian devils with cranberry sauce all over the corners of their mouths.
If that's what you see happen at YOUR Thanksgiving table year after year after year?
Maybe this year you can be one of the ones who challenges your family to take a minute and change up the routine.
Maybe this year, invite everyone gathered around the table waiting to have their fill of turkey and dressing to ask themselves what David asked - "...What can I give back to God
for the blessings he’s poured out on me? "
And then instead of identifying and electing the person most capable of coming up with some bullshit Thanksgiving themed prayer to pray before everyone digs in, maybe grab Grandma's egg timer from the kitchen. 😊
Set that bad boy for a minute and a half.
Tell everyone at that table that before your family eats, you're all going to sacrifice tradition in order to do what David said that HE did when he came up with the formula he practiced in the Psalms for expressing true Thanksgiving.
Pray individually in the name of God.
Have everyone bow their head, join hands (or just collectively fold hands if your group is trying to keep Dr. Anthony Fauci happy with how they practice family togetherness) and say individual, silent prayers of Thanksgiving for having made it through the last 18 months of pandemic living.
Because surviving what we've all survived over the last year and a half?
Maybe I'm crazy but I think that that warrants approaching God this Thanksgiving not with your Uncle or Grandpa's best stab at something that would be etched inside of a Hallmark card... but with real and unfiltered individual expressions of Thanksgiving for all that He's seen us through.
The sickness.
The long hours at work.
The recoveries!
The assistance with transitioning in how we do absolutely everything in life - from church attendance to school to picking up our groceries!
And a million other things.
Set that egg timer and everyone just silently say their own quiet prayer to tell God what He really means to them.
And when Thanksgiving is over???
Keep doing it.
If this "pandemic" has taught us anything, it's that - if we're honest - Thanksgiving is something we have occasion to celebrate more than just once a year.
In our most dire circumstances - when we are most at the end of our own individual resources - can't we all attest that that's when we get the most real with God in our prayers?
Did it ever occur to you that THAT'S BY DESIGN???
I mentioned earlier how King David was my go to guy in the Old Testament for a representation of what it meant for a scripture based character to celebrate true Thanksgiving and how Jesus' disciple Simon was who I looked to for that same sense of representation in the New Testament.
Simon and David both approached Thanksgiving to God with a policy of no bullshit.
They weren't proud and pious as they came before God with their needs; they were admittedly at the end of their ropes and they knew it.
Especially Simon.
In 2020, one of the things that Zach and I started binge watching as we found ourselves forced to stay home more than ever before was a crowd funded television series called "The Chosen".
Christian movies and television series are typically at the top of the list of things I hate the most, lol.
They usually contain writing and acting that is insufferable!
But this series is the first I've ever seen that brings the characters of the Bible to life in a way that's real and (in keeping with the theme of what it means to be truly filled with the spirit of authentic gratitude) bullshit free.
Jesus' disciples in this show aren't just flat, one dimensional characters aimlessly following Jesus around from town to town for lack of anything better to do!
They are motivated by their faith, their politics and (in Simon's case) their desperation.
In short, this series is unafraid to let God's chosen people actually come off the page and be the people I believe that they truly were in real life - broken, ornery and confused by the Savior they all found themselves simultaneously and THANKFULLY falling in love with.
He met their individual needs in an era of history where people needed their needs met as desperately as what we find ourselves needing our needs met today - in America and around the world as Covid 19 wreaks havoc.
The scene I'm linking to next is from "The Chosen".
Hundreds of years after King David cuts the bullshit and prays a real prayer of Thanksgiving to God for all the ways that he's experienced supernatural provision, Simon - a fisherman who has not been having the best luck in his professional endeavors - experiences supernatural provision tailored to HIS circumstances.
Check it out...
I've been there
Hell, I sort of AM there right now!
That's Why They Call It Getting Saved!
The Bible says it in more than one place!
