Amy and “Give Thanks to God”

Give Thanks to God

Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. For the Lord is good; God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness to all generations. (Ps 100:4-5)

It’s the day before Thanksgiving.

Are you in the car? Are you running errands? Are you cooking? Are you traveling? Are you picking someone up from the airport? Are you cleaning?

Are you remembering Thanksgivings past where perhaps you did do all those things and this Thanksgiving is different? Or the same – weirdly – because it’s still a pandemic?

Will there be a spike in COVID cases in two weeks? Will someone you love get sick? Will you get sick? What will that mean for Christmas and how you celebrate it this year?

I was reminded of the Easter 2013 article Rethinking Service by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Wells that suggests that the most important word in the Bible is “with.” In our humanness, we want the most important word in the Bible to be “for” because, Wells suggests, it’s easier to “do for” others and ask God to “do for” us and others than it is to simply “be with.”

Are we going to “be with” or “do for”? The most important question of our time, Wells suggests, is: “Are we going to love or search for solutions?”

My prayer for all of you as we enter into Thanksgiving and the secular holiday season is that you can be fully present with yourself, with God and with all those you encounter. My prayer is that you can breathe deeply and rest in the knowledge that God loves you deeply, is with you and with us until the end of the age.

You can read Rethinking Service here. http://thecresset.org/2013/Easter/Wells_E2013.html