Is Thanksgiving all about the Mashed Potatoes?

On Thursday, millions of people around the U.S. will gather with friends and family to celebrate Thanksgiving.  There will be 40 million green bean casseroles, more than 46 million turkeys will be eaten (those poor little turkeys), and about 141 million pounds of cranberries will be consumed.  I’m most looking forward to the mashed potatoes and pie.

But we all know Thanksgiving is about more than the food.

It’s about being thankful. 

We spend time thinking about our blessings and we say a prayer of thanks to God.  Perhaps you observe the tradition of going around the Thanksgiving table and saying one thing you are thankful for.   We feel genuinely thankful for what we have and what we have been given.

However, it seems like a more appropriate name for this day that we call Thanksgiving is becoming “Thanks-feeling.” 

We don’t honor the “giving” part of Thanksgiving.

But even more importantly we have lost the “giving” part of giving thanks throughout the year.  God has blessed us with so much and the way God asks us to thank Him is to bless others in return.  Yes, it is good to tell God we are thankful for what we have been given, but God expects us to pass on the blessings we have received.  We show God we are thankful by doing God’s work, by sharing our blessings with others.

There are so many ways we can GIVE thanks to God.  We can give our time.  We can give our resources.  We can put our skills and talents to use in a way that serves God through serving our neighbors.  We can give hope and love to those most desperately in need. 

One day each year is set aside as the official Thanksgiving, but the ending of the word “thanksgiving” is significant.  The “ing” ending means it is something that is on-going, something that continues, something that we must always be a part of.  For our entire lives we should never stop giving thanks because we will never stop being blessed.

So may you use this Thanksgiving to determine how you want to GIVE thanks.  What are you going to GIVE in response to all you have been given?  How are you going to GIVE your time?  Where are you going to GIVE your resources? 

May you find your niche in giving where your heart, resources, and gifts meet a need.  And may you come to see that through giving you will receive far more than you give away.

I'm Stuck

Since mid-September, my church has been a homeless shelter once a week.  My church along with three other churches rotate providing the volunteers to staff the shelter and food to provide dinner, breakfast, and a sack lunch for the homeless guests.  It’s really a beautiful thing to see the space at my church being used as a shelter for around 45 men and women each week and I love seeing how all these church members have given their time and resources to care for our neighbors in need.

Over the past couple of months I’ve spent many Wednesday evenings and Thursday mornings helping.  I’ve set up and put away chairs, tables, pads, blankets, and pillows.  I’ve helped prepare and serve food.  And I’ve done a share of washing dishes and kitchen clean up.

However, the way I prefer to volunteer is to sit around.

About a month ago I sat with Linda and we talked about cooking and baking.  We talked about favorite recipes and she shared some good ideas on what to do with the abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers that were coming out of my garden at that time.  And I listened as Linda shared some of the difficulties of being in the homeless system (she is relatively new at being homeless and is still trying to figure things out).

A couple weeks ago, I sat and talked with Oscar as he finished up his dinner.  I hope to share more about Oscar and his story one day, but for now know that Oscar is filled with joy like I’ve never seen before despite the fact that he goes from homeless shelter to shelter each night.  As I talked with him, it boggled my mind that someone so friendly, so full of joy, so full of life could be homeless.

Last week I sat at a table with about 7 men and we talked about everything from Hollywood actors to politics to music to religion.  The men made fun of me and my youngness and naïveté about the way the world works.  We joked and laughed and complained.     

I have gotten to know these men and women who come to spend the night at my church.  There are people I see every week and there are people who come and go.

As I have gotten to know their names and their stories, I find that I have been thinking about them more and more.  I pray for them.  I think about their stories.  I worry about them.  I’ve stayed up late trying to devise ways to help them get out of the homeless system.  I search for programs that might help.  I anxiously wait for each Wednesday night when I can see and talk to my new friends and know they are ok.

I’ve thought a few times that it might have been better to stick with setting up chairs and tables and doing the dishes.  If I hadn’t sat around and talked with Linda or Oscar or Alex or any of the other homeless men and women then I wouldn’t be spending so much time thinking and worrying and trying to make a plan to help them.  One thing that is becoming more and more abundantly clear to me is that there are no easy answers.  Helping people who are homeless and people who are poor is infinitely complex and messy work.  And it’s heartbreaking work.

But now that I did sit around, I know names and faces and stories, and I’m stuck.  In a small way the stories and lives of these people who are homeless are becoming part of my life and my story.  I can’t forget the stories.  I can’t pretend they don’t exist because I know their faces.  I can’t help but feel the need to do whatever I can for Alex, Linda, Oscar, and the others.  I'm stuck.

So what now?  I’m going to sit around this Wednesday night, and we’ll see where things go from there.

Do Beliefs Really Matter?

When I went skydiving a little more than a year ago I was super excited about the whole thing, but I had doubts and was a little nervous about the whole jumping-out-of-an-airplane thing.  

On the ground I had doubts.  While we were waiting for our turn to go up in the plane, other skydivers got in the plane and the plane took off and then a while later we saw the plane overhead and little dots came out of the plane- people jumping out.  A little frightening knowing that would be me in a little bit.  (And it certainly didn’t help that a friend who was also going to jump shouted out in horror as we realized what was happening overhead.)

When I was in that airplane flying up to 14,000 feet I had doubts.  And when that airplane door opened and people started jumping out I had some really serious doubts.  And as Woody (the skydiving instructor I was strapped to) and I got closer to that open door I had some even more serious doubts about what I was about to do.

But when I jumped out of that airplane (or more accurately, when Woody jumped us out of that airplane) I had no doubts whatsoever.  Once I was out of that airplane I didn’t doubt if I wanted to skydive, I was committed to jumping out of that airplane.  And I had no doubt about what I needed to do: exactly what Woody told me to do. 

At any point leading up to my jumping out of the plan I could have decided not to do it.  I could have turned my car around on the way to the skydiving center, I could have walked out of the room we were in for the orientation, I could have left when we were waiting for our turn, I could have taken off my harness, I could have detached myself from Woody and refused to get out of the airplane.  I could have done any of these things and avoided the scariness of jumping out of the plane and it would have been ok (embarrassing, but ok). 

But once I jumped out of the plane, changing my mind would have been disastrous.  If I had decided that I didn’t want to go skydiving and I had unconnected myself from Woody and that parachute that was attached to us, it would not have ended pretty.  But in reality changing my mind wasn’t even an option at this point- I had put everything on the line.

All along I believed that I wanted to jump out of a plane and go skydiving.  But that belief didn’t mean anything until I actually jumped out of the plane. 

So the real question is: what does all this about jumping out of a plane mean for my life? 

It means what I believe doesn’t make a bit of a difference.  The only thing that truly matters is what I actually do.  And it means doubts only matter when I let them prevent me from doing something.

If I say believe something, but do nothing to prove it, does it really make a difference what I believe?  No. I could have said a million time I wanted to go skydiving, I could spent hours imagining and thinking about what it would have been like, but none of that would have mattered.  The only thing that mattered was jumping out of that plane. 

Being a Christian isn’t about believing something.  Sure I believe something (I believe that Jesus’ death on the cross redeems me from my sin, I believe Jesus has left us with a mission to love God and love our neighbors, and I believe that God will come to earth again some day and everything will be restored to the beauty and perfection God intended for the earth), but really these beliefs I hold don’t make a bit of a difference.  The only thing that matters is what I actually do.  The only thing that matters is if my beliefs become convictions through my acting on my beliefs.

I need to put everything on the line.  I need to be so fully committed to living as a Christian that backing out isn’t even an option.

It’s hard to even imagine what this would look like.  I haven’t seen very many people so committed to living as a Christian that it would be disastrous to stop.  The only real example I can think of is Jesus…    

Here’s what gives me some hope: the scariest part of skydiving was approaching that open door of the plane at 14,000 feet.  As soon as I jumped all my doubts disappeared, I had no regrets, and I had this reassurance that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Until I make that jump to be so fully committed to living as a Christian that backing out isn’t an option, I’m going to have a lot of doubts about my faith and about what God is calling me to do.  These doubts are ok to have, it’s human nature to doubt.  But the doubts only matter if they stop me from taking action, if they stop me from living as a Christian.

I just have to get to the point where I can jump.

I’d love to have some feedback on all this.  Do you agree- in the end are actions really all that matter?  And have you or someone you know approached that “open door at 14,000 feet” and made that “jump” to be so fully committed to something (living as a Christian or something else in life)?  If so, how did you or that person you know get to and out that “open door”?

Living the Gospel

James Martin (a Jesuit priest, author, and all around brilliant man) posted a link on Facebook a while back to an article about a nun who had passed away.  His profound comment on the link he shared struck me:

Sister Anne Montgomery had “a lifetime of living the Gospel.” 

I really hope someone will say that about me when I die.

More importantly I hope I will live a life that will warrant someone saying that I spent a lifetime living the Gospel.  

There are a lot of standards you could use to measure the “success” of your life: how much money you make, how high up in the hierarchy of your company you move, how big your house is, how well your children grow up, how happy you are, how many books you publish, how well known or respected you are in your community, how many hours you spend volunteering, etc.

But this is the standard I want my life to be measured by: when I die, will someone be able to honestly say that I spent a lifetime living the Gospel?

I know I will never be able to live the Gospel perfectly.  I will fail again and again to love my neighbor as myself.  I will fail again and again to share God’s love through word and deed.  I will miss or ignore opportunities to care for people in need as Jesus instructed his followers to do.  I will never be able to love God and follow God's commands as God instructed God's followers to do.

But I pray that by the grace of God, God would give me the courage, the faith, and the strength to spend a lifetime living the Gospel.