November is a month for thanksgiving. It is the time marked in our calendars to express and celebrate gratitude. However, 2020 may not feel like a time to be thankful, far from it. Hardship, isolation, quarantine, health crisis, death, riot, pain, exhaustion: these are the words used to describe this year. From the state of the evening news, life is clearly upside down, and the world is on fire.
Why doesn’t God fix everything? Why does He let us hurt so much? Why did He allow 2020 to unfold the way it has? Does He even care?
If you are looking for easy answers to those questions, you won’t find them here. “Easy answers” are like putting bandaids on third degree burns. For example, you’ve all heard some variation of these easy answers: 1. God is stretching us. 2. It’s all in God’s timing. 3. Even if you don’t see it now, God has a plan, and you can trust Him.
While there is often truth to these statements, they don’t do a lick of good and can definitely cause more harm. We say them when we don’t have anything else to tell a person experiencing hurt so deep we shy away from it, or worse, try to cover it, like we would the pain of devastating burns.
It awakens something unsettling in us and we feel like we have to produce an answer for the pain. This is a mistake in our thinking. We don’t, and most of the time, we won’t be able to come up with a solution.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Galatians 6:2 (ESV)
Instead, bear the hurt with the person. Feel what they feel as deeply as they feel it. Get to the point where you care so much that you would willingly take their pain as your own if you could, just so they would be spared from it. This is the hard answer to the tough questions and is the answer Jesus taught: compassion.
For Jesus, compassion meant sacrificing His life for others. He tells us to take up our cross and follow. How far are you willing to go? Can you accept that sometimes there are no answers for the pain? Can you choose to believe that God is still good despite the suffering? What if the eternal definition of “good” is vastly different from our earthly one? Will you decide to bear that cross even then? There are no easy answers here indeed.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Romans 12:15 (NIV)
So, how does this relate to thankfulness?
Thankfulness is an attitude which must be cultivated without regard to circumstance. Both compassion and thanksgiving flow outward from the heart. Thanksgiving must be present in a person’s heart before compassion can flow unhindered to soothe our own hurts and those of others.
Today’s challenge, reader, is this: Thank God for 2020.
If good moments from the year come to mind, thank and praise Him for them. However, thank Him for the bad stuff too. Thank Him for every minute you have trudged through the valley with no end in sight. Thank Him for the pain that feels as debilitating as a third degree burn. Thank Him and MEAN it.
Thankfulness is not an easy answer. In fact, it may be the hardest of all. Expressing genuine gratitude to God for 2020 may be the hardest thing you have ever done. It won’t fix everything. It won’t hit some magic reset button. But it will enable you to fill your heart with compassion. Jesus said His yoke was easy and His burden light. There is a kind of freedom in gratitude, and compassion has the power to break chains.
Hold one in each hand and let them light the way through the rest of what 2020 holds.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.”
Psalm 100:4-5 (ESV)
Grace and Peace,
A. A. Wordsmith
Selah Vie! 