I used to fall asleep to this song, called "Savior".
I used to finish writing in my journal, open up a bedroom window to let in the breeze, & pop on earphones that played only the tunes of Wichita's KTLI Light 99FM.
This song was a favorite of mine in those days. It's by Michael English, one of Christian contemporary music's fallen angels.
I randomly heard it again the other night for the first time in fifteen or so years & was surprised that I remembered the words well enough to sing along.
My favorite phrase in this song is "...the world cries out for love somehow".
I remember as a pre-teen looking up at my ceiling fan whirring & spinning above as those words were sung in my ear over & over again at night.
If there was truth to that assessment then, there certainly is even moreso now.
I've come to understand, however, that as a teenager I lived in a world where those cries for love were not being met with the angry shouting that respond to them today in 2009.
I used to feel that when I went to church on Sunday that anyone could come to the altar at the end of the service. The congregation would rise & prayerfully sing a round or two of "Just As I Am".
...and if in that moment you felt your heart coming to terms with the reality that it too was 'crying out for love somehow', you would go forward & were not denied access to that Love.
Love & redemption used to be as simply attained as kneeling down & asking for them.
Not anymore.
These days Love is so obscure.
People have pretty much figured out that it can't be found in churches anymore, either.
It's like when WalMart stops carrying your favorite flavor of Fruit Roll- Up... & you go through about a month of this inane little routine where you *still* walk down the aisle where it used to be stocked just to see if it might be there... but it never is... & when you ask the stock boy what happened to it he non-compassionately tells you "RipTide Raspberry just wasn't selling. It's been discontinued."
That's what the church is telling people today when they go crying out for love in their midsts.
"We're sorry, but Love has been discontinued."
Some people accept this answer. They go on living their lives still craving a love they once heard rumored was available to them... they still cry out for it... but they don't let themselves believe they'll ever be recipients of what they so desperately pine for.
The minority that's left is a valiant breed.
...& if I may be so bold I'd like to think of myself as being one in their ranks.
They're the ones who don't take 'no' for an answer.
You tell them your store is out of RipTide Raspberry Rollups & they'll make a bee line for Big Lots *convinced* there's still some of those suckers on a store shelf out there somewhere!
Today, this minority has taken their search for a love they're still sure *must* exist to a new frontier.
We punch a time clock for eight hours a day & then hurry home to continue the search for love... online.
We used to, in this country, finish our workday & head home to relax in our easy chairs until it was time to congregate with family around a dinner table complete with pot roast & freshly buttered rolls.
Now it's straight home where our families are lucky to hear a 'hello' out of us before we're off to hole ourselves away in our rooms at our computers sending out our modern day cries for love...
What we used to look for on the floor at the altar we now look for on match.com for $40/month.
We post a status update on facebook & fool ourselves into thinking that if someone cares enough to read it & leave a three or four word comment on it that we are loved & held in high esteem.... that our need is met...
But really, it's not.
If it were we wouldn't continue to flock to every new social networking site that pops up & begin our immediate quest to accumulate as many friends as we can.
Don't get me wrong... there's nothing wrong with any of it. I certainly don't believe someone who keeps their laptop open on facebook several hours a day to be a 'sinner'. Heck, if that were the case (to borrow a line from Paul) I would certainly be the 'chief' of sinners!
But I worry sometimes that those determined sojourners who flock to the internet in search of real community... real love... of whom I count myself a member have gotten distracted from their mission by tweets, twitters, & twitpics.
I guess that thirteen year old with his headphones on is still hungry for RipTide Raspberry Rollups & wonders if anyone else still is too.
I remember the world being a better place when love was accessible to people in a corporate setting.
Is that era over?
Will we ever find love & practice love in each others' midst again?
I know I hope so.
People ask me all the time about my stupid screenname on GCN.
It's "Vizionary" for those of you who don't know.
When I was a senior at Derby Christian School this sales representative came & spoke to all of us about to graduate & presented a sales pitch for class rings.
He gave us each a brochure with 'build your own keepsake' instructions.
First you picked out your birthstone, then the metal you wanted it set in. Next you affixed your school's crest to the center stone & began to look for emblems to adorn each side of the ring that would state something about your personality.
You could pick out a treble clef if you were musically inclined... a cross if you wished to commemorate your faith... or maybe a pair of praying hands.
I knew I probably wouldn't end up getting a class ring that early in the year but I looked at the brochure anyway & imagined what I'd like to get.
I selected an emerald set in white gold & for the emblem to adorn the side I picked out an etching of a setting sun. The single word code to indicate this choice on the order form was "Visionary".
I loved music growing up... & I loved writing... & I loved, loved, LOVED debate. But I really felt that that word represented me well.
"Visionary".
When I joined GCN some five years later I still had that word floating around inside the recesses of my psyche, I guess.
I remember thinking that if there was anything *worth* envisioning in this world it was a chance for people who had been told to hush up & keep quiet by the church to rally together & cry out for love somehow together... elsewhere.
I added a 'z' to the word for pizazz & haven't stopped 'envisioning' since.
I guess that the other day - when I heard the Michael English song referenced earlier - it was sort of a wake up call to me that I had let myself get too distracted.
While my 'envisioning' has been constant my faithfulness to act on what I envision has not been.
I suppose the point of today's blog is to challenge anyone who may find themselves reading it to assess if they too are guilty of becoming too complacent.
We can want all the good things in the world. We can want them badly. But wishing accomplishes very little in the grand scheme of things.
Those cries of the people around us looking for hope & looking for love - they haven't EVER gone away. Even if we've been so misguided as to think that they have whilst we distract ourselves telling half the world via facebook that we '...just ate a 'nummy sandwich.' lol.
I'm going to have a new little nephew entering this world soon.
I really hope he has a chance to meet Jesus.
Not Jesus the political pundit.
Not Jesus the hatemonger.
Not Jesus the terrorist, spewing end of the world propaganda in a frenzied whirlwind attempt to catapult us all into the apocalypse.
But Jesus.
The Jesus who sees you in your bed with your headphones on & answers your cries for love as the ceiling fan whirls overhead.
The Jesus Who forgives... Who changes what needs to be changed in us on His timetable & no one else's. The Jesus Who leaves what *doesn't* need to be changed the hell alone even if His followers insist He should do otherwise.
The Jesus Who loves us all...
The Jesus Who we used to come together to seek out & who I hope we will again.
The One Who answers all those who 'cry out for love somehow'.
The Jesus Who is...the Savior.
I believe He's out there. ...and like so many who are searching for Him He's just waiting to be found.
My senior year of high school my Grandma & I rented "The Sixth Sense" & watched it in the basement of her duplex both of us wide eyed & suspense filled as we shared a small bowl of chocolate covered pretzels.
I remember her exclaiming, "He's been dead the whole time!" as the movie wound down to it's climactic finale & I thought I had never enjoyed a movie more!
Since then I've maintained a somewhat untraditional love for all things spooky. I know that born again Christians aren't to entertain any sort of fondness for such things but it isn't as though I fit into the mold for a 'traditional, born again Christian' anyway. lol.
I like being spooked! Which brings me back to "Paranormal State". Basically it's a half hour program that runs in a marathon block on Monday nights. My coworker, Shawana, introduced me to it when we worked together overnight a few months back. I've been a faithful fan ever since.
Many have been the Monday evenings where I've camped out on my loveseat in front of my big screen & watched Ryan (sidebar: see below - yummy!) exploring haunted locales in pursuit of ghosts, goblins, etc.
Basically what I've learned from watching multiple episodes is that scary entities like to make themselves visible for a brief moment & then vanish leaving you standing in a puddle of your own urine wondering what the heck you just saw & if your sanity is intact.
They open doors & slam 'em shut, leave handprints on windows, show up in black & white photographs & really, now that I think about it, do lots of things commonly done by Kate Winslet in "Titanic". Only it's scarier! Yes, even scarier than watching Rose have her portrait drawn.
...all that to say, if you let yourself camp out & watch several documented hours of the previously mentioned Ryan cart his hot little self all over the country chasing these ghosties, you're bound to find yourself in quite the paranoid frame of mind.
I speak from experience as it was only a month ago or so that I finished watching my Monday night block of the show & decided I needed to run to Walmart for some grocery replenishment before going to bed.
I grabbed my car keys, threw on my ball cap, & headed out.
No sooner had I swung the front door open then I heard the bushes to my right rustle noisily.
I jumped & let loose, I'm sure, of a few expletives as I tried to adjust my eyes in the dark & see what had caused the noise. I crossed the front step cautiously & did a few laps around the shrubbery off the front of my doorstep, first at a distance & progressively getting ever closer to it.
I saw nothing. I laughed at myself & chocked it up to having, maybe for once, engaged in too much haunted television.
I returned from my grocery shopping about an hour later & had forgotten about the rustling in the bushes as I unloaded the trunk of my car & gathered up an arm full of groceries. I walked up the sidewalk to my apartment & again a violent shaking in the bushes scared the soup out of me! I dropped the bags & ran leaving a spinning perforated two liter of Dr. Pepper hissing behind me.
What the heck is that??? I thought.
Now determined on channeling my inner 'Ryan' I stooped to retrieve a bottle of spray cheese from one of the nearby dropped bags of groceries. I popped off the cap, & positioned my index finger on the nozzle in preparation to protect myself from whatever refugee from the pit of hell might be lurking in the bush.
I reached out with my free hand and grabbed ahold of one of the center branches & shook the entire shrub viciously, trying to bring to mind any information I had picked up in my time at VBI regarding exorcism all those years back... pretty sure Pastor Sharon would be cool with me attempting to banish demons with aerosol cheese.
The bush responded with several angry shrieks & I hopped straight out of my flip flops shouting "Get behind me Satan!" & spraying the shrub in yellow stringy goo from top to bottom.
I ran around the corner of the building barefoot & eventually summmoned the courage to peek from my hiding place to see what had become of my surrendered foot wear.
I again focused my eyes in the dark & honed in on four little furry creatures licking cheese off my sandals with their little pink tongues.
Feeling suddenly very silly I traipsed over to them, still keeping my distance, & sighed in relief as I began picking up my formerly dropped groceries.
"I'm sorry, " I said, "You must have me confused with my former roommate, David. HE was the cat lover! Me, not so much."
The four little black kittens looked up at me with glowing gold eyes accusingly as they continued to polish off the rest of the spray cheese from the tops of my sandals.
Kinda grossed out by it I let them finish & then watched them run off at lightning speed when I approached to reclaim my shoes. The last thing I needed or wanted were four kittens! I went into my apartment hoping they'd returned to wherever they came from & that I wouldn't see them again or have to worry about taking care of them.
But the next night, when I set down my study materials intent on taking a break, & walked outside to see if I could catch any soldiers from the base out for an evening run, there they were again! ...dashing under the shrubbery as I made my presence known.
I couldn't help but notice they looked very thin & sort of sickly so, against my better judgment I went inside & opened up a can of tuna & dished it onto a paper plate.
I set it down outside & watched from behind my bedroom mini blinds as my little quadrant of demon kitties harnessed the boldness to all congregate on my front step & feast on what I'm sure was some much appreciated Star Kist.
It's funny but as the weeks went by & I kept prepping for my registry exam I found that my nightly trips out to my doorstep to feed the kitties was not only a welcome distraction but a reminder of what I'm on this planet to do... love.
Ever since failing my registry exam the first time last June I've given myself permission to feel down in the dumps rather often. I've felt stupid & at a stalemate... like I serve no purpose & like I have nothing to offer a future mate (which, in the aftermath of having *also* been dumped for someone else in '08 is a very scary thing to feel alongside the already present feelings of inadequacy).
Turns out when you're rejected by not just your peers in your chosen profession but also your boyfriend & your church it's easy to let yourself take on a stance of "Why bother to love"? When love & commitemnt to things routinely yields the result of rejection & hurt the human soul is apt to find it to be a less than worthwhile pastime.
...and as a Christian... when you find yourself unmotivated to love anymore... that's a reality scarier than any tale involving any demon ever crafted.
I think that little band of kitties was a recreation of the Genesis tale, for me, of when Abraham was visited by three angels in Genesis 18.
Abraham, it would seem, possessed the knowledge that first & foremost a dedication to one's God was to be manifested in love, generosity, & care taking. That professed love of God was void without practiced love to his fellowman.
...and not that the object of obeying the command to love is to receive a blessing but as we read, we see that's exactly the result that took place.
Abraham's generosity yielded verbal confirmation from God Himself that that which he had been promised seemingly for a lifetime would soon occur...
That his son, Isaac, would be born & the first in a great chain of descendants would be brought into the world.
Because of a simple act of love God bestowed a blessing that was the beginning of a much anticipated "Happily Ever After".
Perhaps I expect too much out of having taken thirty seconds to open a can of albacore for a band of hungry kittens...
...all I know is that about a week ago I got an email informing me that I had, indeed, passed my exam & that the credential I've spent literally HOURS & HUNDREDS of dollars pursuing over the last two years was now mine.
Laugh at my interpretation if you must but I remember penning these words in my blog this time last year, part confession of faith & part uncertain outcome I hoped to be true... "God intends to do right by me".
In the aftermath of this blessing I think I'm going to be trading in my Monday nights of "Paranormal" marathons in for trying to get involved with a Bible Study hosted by my recently discovered local MCC.
It's time to stop having to wait on a band of kittens show up on my doorstep before I have an opportunity to express love.
That I've actively chosen to omit myself from an environment where showing love for others is a regular part of my life is the real horror story.
"Paranormal" is defined as 'Something outside the ordinary that cannot logically be explained'.
God's been faithful to me even though I haven't felt it worthwhile to be faithful to Him...
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 backa 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...
1-6I love God because he listened to me,
listened as I begged for mercy.
He listened so intently
as I laid out my case before him.
Death stared me in the face,
hell was hard on my heels.
Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn;
then I called out to God for help:
“Please, God!” I cried out.
“Save my life!”
God is gracious—it is he who makes things right,
our most compassionate God.
God takes the side of the helpless;
when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.
7-8I said to myself, “Relax and rest.
God has showered you with blessings.
Soul, you’ve been rescued from death;
Eye, you’ve been rescued from tears;
And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling.”
...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...
Here's what I love about this episode and its depiction of Simon.
Dallas Jenkins, the writer and producer of this show, executed Simon's desperation in a way that is perfectly relatable.
Simon is not just a guy who needs to catch some fish in order to avoid having a bad day.
Simon needs to catch fish in a way that he's never had to before in order to avoid his whole life coming apart at the seams!
If Simon were a dude struggling to make life go on working in America in 2021, NOW would be the point of the story where he'd be going out to his car to affix a "Let's Go, Brandon!" bumper sticker to the back of his vehicle.
The deck was STACKED against this guy as much as it could be when Jesus finds him on the shore of this sea and facilitates a miracle for him.
Simon is not having the easiest time surviving in society after the Roman Empire moves to town and starts taxing the ever loving crap out of he and his fellow fisherman.
The guy is set to be imprisoned unless he can pay some crazy high back taxes and in his world? The only way he's going to make it is if he has like the best fishing expedition he's EVER had in his life in the next 24 hours.
So the guy gets all his gear and his boat and his brother to come along and help and they pull an all nighter!
They are out there attempting to catch fish by moonlight all the way until sun up and... they don't catch a single thing.
Have you ever been there?
Your life... being able to go on living it in the manner that you've worked hard to be able to live it in the first place... it's all going to come to a crashing halt unless you come up with a plan and execute it flawlessly? I've been there Hell, I sort of AM there right now!
There is nothing more unsettling.
Because you can pray and act in faith and do everything that YOU are supposed to do... but if the night of the big moment arrives and the fish aren't biting?
Well... you're screwed, ain't ya?
Thanksgiving?
It's the time of year that we should seek to center ourselves enough to know that even if OUR plan doesn't result in our rescue that His plan DOES!
That's Why They Call It Getting Saved!
We have all this theological and doctrinal fodder that we throw around when we're talking about the Christian idea of "salvation".
And I'm not saying that some of the ideas that Christianity promotes around the idea of salvation aren't correct.
But at it's heart, salvation is the thing that yields Thanksgiving... and Thanksgiving - when it's real - results in you posturing yourself after Peter on your knees in front of Jesus being so grateful that He's come through for you in a way that you could NEVER come through for yourself that you say "Thank you so much for doing for me what I never could! I will follow You anywhere!" 😊
Granted, this Thursday?
After your belly is full of food and the tryptophan is kicking in?
You're not physically going to feel like "following" anyone anywhere, lol.
Unless it's to bed to go into a sweet carb coma and sleep it off, that is.
But on Friday, when you're waking up for the day and coming to your senses and processing the events of the day you just lived through 24 hours earlier?
Maybe that's when you can make the decision (if you never have before) that Thanksgiving is something you're going to carry with you in your heart to a degree you never have before.
Maybe Thanksgiving can materialize into a real decision to start talking regularly to Jesus.
Not necessarily because you're going to start going to church everytime the doors are open... or buy 8 different colors of highlighters to start marking up your Bible with... but because you realize you need Him and on more than just an occasional holiday here and there.
In a world where something as tiny as a virus can destroy every aspect of life, you/we/I need Him everyday.
On the days you are capable of acting like a saint, sure.
But mostly on the days where you're entirely aware that you're acting like what you really are, lol - a sinner. (<-----Trust me on that one!)
It's so simple.
All that has to happen is a devotion to engage Him in conversation!
The Bible says it in more than one place!
We have to stop making it so complicated.
If you feel gratitude rising up within you this Thanksgiving to the point that you want to be in an eternal relationship with the Giver of all good things... so that you can experience a life of victory like what King David and Simon experienced?
So that you can experience the type of victory that even a heathen like old Nick has faith that someway, somehow he's going to continue to go on to experience once the pandemic chapter of his life is finished? Lol!
All you have to do is call on Jesus/ Talk to Him/ Make it a thing you do faithfully whether it's G-rated or R-rated.
That's how real gratitude gets fleshed out.
And experienced over and over and over.
"And for all these blessings, may the Lord make us truly greatful."
