So, are you ready for Thanksgiving? You have the turkey, the stuffing, the green bean casserole?
Ask my wife Sue about the green bean casserole. She says the only blessed thing about it is how good it feels when you stop eating it.
You see, she’s not a real vegetable lover, so generally, we don’t include squash or even candied yams on our table, or even candied carrots. Maybe some corn.
And this year like last year we will have roasted brussels sprouts, but those are for all the adults at the table, including Noah! Not Sue.
The wonder of Thanksgiving that feeling of being blessed when we gather with the folks we love and the folks that love us.
But with COVID cases once again growing, our celebration of being blessed is threatened, and our impatience with it is growing!
We want everyone to be safe! We want everyone to get through this unscathed! But we want everyone at the table too, and this virus is just making it all a mess.
And in a world of immediacies, we find the slow grind of more and more and more cases exhausting. We know we have to do what we can to stop the growth of the virus, because we have seen the potential devastation it can cause.
We don’t want our hospitals overflowing, even if they can treat the disease better now than they could in March and April.
We don’t want to lose loved ones, or have them sick now, and potentially sick for months and years after the virus has done its damage.
But we are tired and sad and strung out and we just want the world to go back to the way it was without Covid. But…
It’s not, and so we search, in our better moments, our thinking and praying moments, asking God to enlighten us, open our hearts and minds to the Spirit’s presence so we can be of one mind in facing these troubled days.
We want to know, as we the community of faith, how to face the challenges our world is now experiencing, what are we to do, how we are to think, and what is to be our approach to making a difference.
And it turns out that Paul answers that question in 1 Thessalonians 5, when he tells the folks in Thessalonica to “Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do.”
Rejoice, pray, and thank God!
You see, Paul is not telling you how to feel about what is happening around you.
You are welcome to be crabby if you need to, you are welcome to be a bit down about it all. You are even welcome to go on Facebook and whine to the world about how Covid is screwing up your plans for the Guinness book record turkey roast!
Well, actually, we would all appreciate if you didn’t. There is far too much whining on Facebook already!
But, you can feel bad about it all.
However, a better choice would be to rejoice, pray, and thank God!
Rejoice, because there are many things besides Covid that are happening in our lives. In some houses a new baby has, a new marriage has taken place, a new job has been started.
In other houses, there is a full table, someone has recovery from a scary illness, or someone has retired. In some a soldier has come home, in others a college student without cooties, and in some while life has been rough, a moment of peace as come.
Yes, there are troubles. And we could focus on them.
Instead, Paul reminds us that instead we can rejoice, most importantly because God has sent Jesus into our lives and the strengthening power of the Holy Spirit, and the appropriate response to that is always to bring the sacrifice of praise!
We are to be jubilant in all things. Even in the struggles. Because as the people of God we see beyond the struggles to an amazing God who even in the midst of the storm is steering the boat and guiding us safely home.
And, beyond rejoicing, we are also to pray.
Not wimpy little prayers, but big whopping prayers, asking for God’s love and care and presence and power to be revealed in the midst of the storm.
To raise up a lighthouse, or to open our eyes so we can see it. To steer us away from the rocks, or if we crash, to get out of the boat safely and onto shore.
God will be with us until the end of time, so let’s act like it, acknowledging in prayer, private and in community, that the God who loves us, is loving us in the midst of all we are struggling with.
That God has us, like the rescuer who has a grip on us that won’t let the floods sweep us away, guiding us to solid ground, where we will be able once again to stand and lift our hearts in prayer.
We are to pray with boldness, with joy, and with thanks, because we have seen our mighty God touch the lives of all kinds of folks, including you and I.
What an amazing experience it would be if every person who is listening to our worship online today, and everyone who is here in person, wrote out a list of all the things we are thankful for, and then we attached them all end to end just to see how the long the list was?
What do you think?
Would it be ten feet long? 20? 50? And even then, would it contain all the wonderful things that we have been blessed with, the people, the experiences, the material things, and most importantly, the relationships, with family and friends, with the community of faith and with God.
We have reason to give thanks! And when we add that to our joys and our prayers, is has the possibility of completely overwhelming our whining about all the stuff we whine about.
Yes, there are reasons to pout, feel sad, and wish it was different.
But there is also reason to rejoice, pray and give thanks.
The choice is ours!
But which one do you think will change our hearts and make us more like Jesus?
And having rejoiced, prayed and given thanks, God will bless us with the peace that passes all understanding, even in the midst of Covid.
May it be so! Amen.
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