21 Nov The Thanksgiving of the Broken

Where does Thanksgiving find you this year, friend? Perhaps you are bursting at the seams with joy, brimming over with praise to God for all He has done this year. On the other hand, maybe as you gather with others this year your table is full of rich foods, but your heart is full of pain due to estranged relationships, strife and tension, job insecurity, or a health crisis.

Can we be thankful even in this?

Habakkuk has a word for the thanksgiving tables of the broken this year:

“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
  he makes my feet like the deer’s;
  he makes me tread on my high places.” – Habakkuk 3:17-19

What are your barren places, friend? Can you gaze long at that bare, fruitless stump in your life and choose to turn it into an altar of thanks?

Can you say, “I have the Lord and so I have all that I need“?

Can you sing a hymn of praise as you watch the fiery embers of burned up dreams, declaring that your hope is not in your dreams but in your God who promises to always give you what is good?

Can you run your fingers lovingly over the broken places of your life, noticing the ways the light shines so clearly in the cracks, an exhibit of God’s strength and beauty on display?

And to all the mountains you’ve asked God to move that still stand tall and unshakable, can you take courage and begin to climb them, asking God for hinds feet instead?

Thanksgiving is Warfare

Sometimes Thanksgiving rolls off the tongue like maple syrup off of hot pancakes – sweet, light, and flowing.

Sometimes Thanksgiving must be dug up from our deeps, stirred by faith’s memory of God’s faithfulness to us in days past.

Always, Thanksgiving is warfare.

Yes, warfare.

When the faithful gather to declare songs and hymns of praise to God, silencing the serpents lies,

Thanksgiving is warfare.

When heads bow in gratitude over a meal, acknowledging their Provider and Sustainer, lofty mindsets of self-sufficiency tumble,

Thanksgiving is warfare.

When full hearts, content in God’s true riches, share with those in need,

Waging war on poverty as the unseen are seen,

Thanksgiving is warfare.

Hell rages as hearts rejoice amidst the ashes of this world, clinging to the pearl of the Kingdom that is to come.

When health fails and relationships strain, when the present hurts and the future is uncertain, even then and especially then,

we will, with Habakkuk, yet declare, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”