Psalm 30
“Thankful Living”
02 July 2017 St.
Andrew’s Military Chapel
I have to
admit, passages such as this one make me uncomfortable. It’s because they can
be dangerous to read alone. One of the more difficult aspects of being a
chaplain is sitting with someone in a difficult time, in what can seem a
hopeless situation, where their only question is why didn’t God come through
and fix my problem? And then they will quote a passage such as this and assume that
healing and recovery from a dark time is a preordained right of those who have
faith.
So, it is
with a bit of caution and trepidation that I expound my thoughts on this
passage. Especially with my father undergoing a tough battle with cancer. One
that I pray for easing of the pain and eventual remission, but with no
guarantee that he will enjoy the circumstances of the Psalmist to pen something
such as this prayer of thanksgiving for recovery.
Don’t get
me wrong, I’m not saying that miracles don’t happen or that there is no need
for faith to get us through the tough times in our life. I’ve seen miracles as
well as know that faith and the positive thinking that it fosters is a powerful
tool in getting people through all sorts of suffering, to include providing a
documented healing benefit in some instances.
We just can’t overplay our hand and
translate one positive outcome as a generality. For we all can name situations
for us and loved ones in which the individual suffering a grave illness wasn’t
able to pen a prayer of thanksgiving following a full recovery.
Before we apply this one Psalm as
the rule for every time we encounter a life or death situation, we need to
explore the context and the circumstances so we aren’t making claims or
promises that will do spiritual damage to those whom we deeply love.
Through God, all things are
possible. That’s a claim made by both God (through multiple prophets) and
Christ on multiple occasions. Faith is powerful, faith is important, faith is
much needed. Faith can do many things, but it can’t do everything. Faith is not
God. Faith is trusting in God and God’s plan for humanity. Trusting that God
has the ultimate claim on our lives.
That is an important thing to
understand when reading this Psalm. Here we see someone who is giving thanks
for what God has done and how that has changed the writer’s outlook on life and
God’s role in the world. The Psalmist knows that a gift was received and wants
the world to know how grateful they are for that gift as well as to let the
world know who they believe provided such a powerful and beautiful gift.
Here is where we can learn a great
deal from this passage; everything is a gift. Life is precious and fragile and
each day we wake up truly is a gift, one for which we should be grateful. One
which we should not take lightly or fail to notice. Because of that we should
live our lives from a posture of thankfulness not of false expectation.
The Dali Lama once described this
idea as we must treat every day as a gift and everything we have as a gift
because there are so many others who have nothing. Thinking in this way will
limit our thinking of gift as expectation and reframe our thinking into what
this Psalm is getting at.
Perhaps we’ve lost the meaning of
the word gift through consumption capitalism. We begin to think that gift is
tangible and material. It can be, but gift is so much more than getting a piece
of material for which you didn’t exchange anything of value yourself.
The danger in not accepting life
and everything in life as a gift is that we begin to think there is never
enough. If we get the nice car, we begin to want the newer model, the nicer
accessories, always bigger, newer, and better. This isn’t to say don’t
occasionally treat ourselves, rather to understand that it is a blessing to be
able to obtain things on a whim. When we lose sight of that, we begin to lose
sight of the fleeting nature of life and how much of a gift we receive each new
day.
Theologian Karl Barth once
discussed that there was only one sin: ingratitude. Everything else we consider
a sin in modern day language can trace itself back to a lack of gratitude for
life and what we have been given. Specifically, when we fail to recognize that
every part of creation is first and foremost a gift.
This may lead some to ask the
question, why does God need to receive our thanks? And that is a great
question. It’s less that God needs us to give thanks for what we have been
given and more that we need to give thanks. In giving thanks we develop and deepen
our relationship with the one giving the gift. Thanksgiving and praise are
vital in every relationship. Those two actions are sun and water to the seed of
relationship deep in all of our hearts.
If you never show appreciation to
those around you for their help, their work, their kind words, their support,
their listening ear, or any other means by which others support you and help
you thrive, you will live a very lonely life because those relationships will
wither on the vine. We have to continuously and purposefully tend and care for
our relationships. Simply saying thank you, and other ways of showing
appreciation and thanksgiving are necessary.
And I would venture a guess that
all of us here need to improve in this area. I know I need to. I used to think
I was a very thankful person. Then I started dating this amazing woman who
lives a life full of thankfulness. Lisa never misses an opportunity to
explicitly let others know that she is thankful for them and their influence in
her life. That spirit of thankfulness is one of the many reasons I married her.
I know I have a lot of work to do in that area to even come close to live a
life of such thankfulness. But, because of her I am getting better at that,
ever so slowly.
Neither the Psalmist nor I are
saying that we’re always going to be overflowing with thankfulness, especially
during the trying times. However, we do need to reflect and look for ways we
can give thanks each and every day so that we strengthen our relationships with
our spouse, our families, our friends, our neighbors, and even with God.
Perhaps we write down or say aloud that for which we are thankful each day. We
could write a thank you note each week to someone who impacted our life in a
positive manner. We can reach out and call a friend and actually tell them how
much they mean to us.
When we work to cultivate
relationships built on thankfulness for what we have we focus on what really
matters: relationships. Being grateful for those relationships strengthens them
and those relationships will get us through the tough times, just as the
Psalmist describes. And those strong relationships will understand when we are
going to times of low thankfulness and will work hard to nourish us and get us
to a place where we can take a breath, reflect, and restore ourselves.
So let us go from here seeking and
building relationships cultivated in a spirit of thankfulness each and every
day.
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