Every year in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November, the nation enters into a time of Thanksgiving. Even though this holiday remains on the progressive chopping block alongside Columbus day, we choose to value its message. Gratitude and celebration take a back seat in our daily routines. Worries about the price of gas, milk, and rent often spark feelings of its antithesis. Injustice, unfairness, harshness, and bureaucratic apathy tend to pervade the cultural gestalt, yet we set aside time intentionally to smell the roses and remember what life is all about during this special time. However, after we leave the feast and our families, do we keep this spirit with us?
True gratitude offers us a special perspective that rises above circumstance and mere emotionality. If we consider Joy in the New Testament, we find that it is found in suffering and persecution alongside things of life, worship, and fellowship. It does not rely upon what the world offers you on a particular day. A paycheck brings peace for a moment; a new car is fun for a while; the honeymoon period must eventually mature into something deeper. Likewise, thankfulness must reside in something deeper and more grounded than the vicissitudes of the age.
To begin to understand this, one must grapple with the evil and the good alike. Both bring a special and unique experience of life from the abstract to the real. Walking alongside someone who experiences suffering or having someone walk alongside you in yours kindles this understanding of life. The things that trouble our spirits and lives are indeed bad things; we should not pretend otherwise. However, the joy and gratitude we can experience from the comfort of a loved one always offers a glimmer of light, as bright or dim it might be.
There’s a funny thing about human nature. We have an innate sense that things are not as they ought to be; we understand that there is something misshaped about our current reality. All of the bad days, meaningless jobs, politics, wars, bitterness, taxes, and ugliness of our world surely must not be the way things are supposed to be. Yet, the love and peace that comes from a hug, kiss, a hand on the shoulder, or pat on the back seems to suddenly overlay a certain lens onto our vision. We find that there’s another thing that exists beyond the torment of this present darkness.
If there is such a thing beyond this dark coil, something that surpasses the pervasive pain of existence, then it must distinguish itself from the world’s fallen nature in some way. What about the presence of loved ones and their affections might help accomplish this? Gratitude and thankfulness for the kindred souls we surround ourselves with points us towards something above this possessing qualities transcendent and lovely.
When we look at another human being, we see their foibles, faults, blemishes, physique, beauty and their demeanor. However, beyond that, there is a soul that we are observing, eternal and of the greatest of importance. When we take account of this and grapple with the reality that another person is a complex, hylomorphic and eternal being, then we must recognize that we are speaking, arguing, fighting, and fellowshipping with a being of great value. This is a glimpse into the highest form of gratitude and love, the antidotes to misery.
We are not made for the world as it exists today. The earth is passing away and the heat death of the universe creeps ever closer day by day. Our comfort and love with one another points to our final and ultimate place of rest and peace: eternal bliss and fellowship.
Love for one another transcends suffering because it is more real than the entropic universe around us. If God is Love and he is the creator and architect of Physics and the Cosmos, then partaking in life as He has ordered it to be gives us a taste of reality as it was meant to be. This is a gift the regenerate and lost alike are freely given. The things that ultimately persist into eternity are the things which well up within us a joy that surpasses the present darkness we find ourselves in. It is for that reason that during all times of life, we must give thanks.
Our lives are short. The ones we love most are not guaranteed another day of life. True gratitude and love recognizes this simultaneously. We cherish the moments we experience each day even as we know that this time is but a season in the Earth’s long existence. The true reality of life comes to us in small moments of joy and peace. The persons to your right and left will become objects of terror or beings of greatness. It is only because of God’s infinite mercy that we have time to choose which one we will become. For the ones we harbor a particular love, we want more than anything that they will also choose reality over non-reality and its despair; then, we may also enjoy them forever.
All around us, civilizations rise and fall; Man makes plans and God laughs; all is not well. However, it will be well. The creator of all that is Lovely and Good has given us a path out of the darkness. In that time and place all that is Wonderful will be made clear; there will be only gratitude, love, and joy.