|
Giving Thanks in All Circumstances?
A Sermon Preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va.
Thanksgiving Day - November 25, 2004
Scripture: Thessalonians 5:18
Paul tells his friends at Thessalonica that they are to be
thankful in all circumstances for this is the will of God concerning them. It is
the same passage in which he instructs them to “pray without ceasing” and to
“rejoice evermore.” In my heart of hearts I want to say to the great Apostle,
“any other impossible instructions you want to give us?”
Obviously, if we are going to even begin to pray without
ceasing we have to change prayer from and act to an attitude. Here is our clew
to being thankful in all circumstances. Changing Thanksgiving from an act to an
attitude begins to make a lot of sense.
Thanksgiving Every Week
Maybe the first baby-step toward being thankful in all
circumstances is to move thanksgiving from one day a year to many days during
the year. Paul would say, every day of the year.
They say, whoever they is, that Thanksgiving is the busiest
traffic time of the year. Family coming and going. Traffic also happens between
the refrigerator, the stove, and the Thanksgiving table already loaded with
food. And, of course, there is an event come Saturday in Blacksburg that will
put some people on the road.
Suppose, just suppose, we started with one or two days a
week making them gratitude days, or thanksgiving days. I ask you, would it make
a difference in our troubled world if every week, we set aside some days to be
thankful in all circumstances.
The Mauve Sofa
John Ortberg tells of the time in his young family when
they traded their Super-Beetle for a piece of furniture they wanted very badly.
It was a mauve couch. It was about the color of Pepto-Bismol but mauve was much
the better word for it.
The man at the furniture store warned us not to get it when
he found out we had children. “You don’t want a mauve sofa,” he advised. “Get
something the color of dirt.” But the young Ortbergs had the naïve optimism that
young parenthood brings and thought they could certainly handle their children.
“Give us the mauve sofa,” they said.
From that moment on, everyone in the family knew clearly
the number one rule in the house. Don’t sit on the mauve sofa. Don’t touch the
mauve sofa. Don’t play around the mauve sofa. Don’t eat on, breath on, look at,
or think about the mauve sofa. Remember the forbidden tree in the Garden of
Eden. “On every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but upon this sofa,
the mauve sofa, you may not sit, for in the day you sit thereupon, you shall
surely die.”
Then came the Fall. One day there appeared on the mauve
sofa a stain. A red stain. A red jelly stain.
So Mrs. Ortberg, who had chosen the sofa and simply adored
it, lined up the three children in front of it: Laura, age four; Mallory, two
and one-half; and Johnny, six months.
“Do you see that, children?” she asked. “That’s a stain. A
red stain. A red jelly stain. The man at the sofa store says its not coming out.
Not forever. Do you know how long forever is, children? That’s how long we’re
going to stand here until one of you tells me who put the stain on the mauve
sofa.”
Mallory was the first to break. With trembling lips, and
tear-filled eyes she said, “Laura did it.” But Laura passionately denied it.
There was silence for the longest time. No one said a word. John was standing
by. He knew the children wouldn’t tell because they had never seen their mother
so upset. He knew they wouldn’t tell because they knew if they did they would
spend eternity in the time-out chair. And he knew they wouldn’t tell because it
was John who put the stain on the mauve sofa. He was just trying to find a safe
place to confess.
What is the mauve sofa in your life? The something in your
life that you expect to be perfect, unblemished, just like you dreamed it, just
like you imagined it. The mauve sofa.
The God who created gratitude in the first place comes to
us in his grace and says, “Hey, guy, hey gal. Take your eye off of the stain.
That couch is a great place to sit, to read, to hold and love a child, to
appreciate life at the end of the busy day, to just relax after the kids are to
bed.”
To understand Paul’s instruction to be thankful in all
circumstances you have to locate the mauve sofa in your life and begin to
overlook the red jelly stain and live with gratitude with the couch for that
which it was created, - to sit on.
The Fear Factor
To be thankful in all circumstances we have to begin taking
fear out of the picture, and the best way to do that is to invite God into your
circumstance. God is the God of gratitude not of fear. Anxiety is not part of
the furniture of heaven.
In C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the
Dawn Treader has sailed into Dark Island and everyone on the boat is terrified,
much like the disciples were on that boat in the Sea of Galilee. Lucy, one of
the children visitors to Narnia Land, is terrified also. She begins to pray in a
whisper to Aslan who is the Lion-figure of Christ in C.S. Lewis’ novels. Lucy
whispers, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all get us out of Dark Island.
Lewis writes, “The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a
little, a very little better.” Almost immediately tiny specks of light
appeared. They didn’t destroy the darkness, but they somehow brought hope.
Lucy looked along the beam and saw something in it. At
first it looked like a cross, then a kite and then with a whirring of wings it
was a bird. It circled the mast, and whispered to Lucy, “Courage, dear heart,”
and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s. With the voice a delicious peace
crept over her heart.
The presence of the Spirit of Christ is ours when we invite
him into our situation. Fear begins to lose its hold and trust begins to replace
it. The circumstance may not change, but the fear that is born in that
circumstance, loses its power. We learn, as did Lucy, to look for the specks of
light in the midst of the darkness. And soon or late the Lord sends the message
that is priceless, “Courage, dear heart. Courage.”
May we be thankful in all circumstances this day.
|
