Give Thanks? For what? And to whom?

This Thanksgiving, I’m posting this one “omnibus Thanksgiving post,” complete with an exhortation to reexamine your own (as I am my own) lives for blessings you may have discounted, overlooked or indeed, thought to be curses, disasters or other hard cheese.

And yes, it is a rough compilation of old and new, borrowed, but nothing blue.

First, something I am daily, continually and deeply grateful for: Twenty-eight years ago tomorrow, as a result of Divine blinding of a good woman’s eyes and heart (*heh*), I became the husband of my Wonder Woman. Yes, our wedding rehearsal (and the lavish rehearsal dinner given by my aunt and uncle) was on Thanksgiving day, November 23, 1978. So this year, even Thanksgiving Day matches up with the events of our wedding.

In addition to our twenty-eighth wedding anniversay tomorrow, I get to celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary since my Wonder Woman “died” three times one day in the Fall of 1998.*

Yes, I’m grateful. And my gratitude has two subjects to whom I am thankful: my Wonder Woman, of course, and the God who, according to her “moved into my little Pinto as I was driving through Colorado and told me to answer ‘Yes”.”

🙂

And who returned her to me eight years ago, despite what the medical folks kept saying and she lay asleep…

But my gratitude is for apparently iexplicably miraculous events (Wonder Woman’s “yes” and her eyes opening and looking into mine with recognition, awareness and love, after the medical people warned me again and again that it was unlikely to happen that way.

But for others, real people in a real world, the story turns out differently… and still they find things to be grateful for… and Persons to thank.

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. (Not so Dickensian, but oh, so true.) War ravaged the land for 30 years. During that time, Martin had served as one of the pastors of a once-prosperous town that had suffered greatly in the war. Sacked three times. Saved from sacking once only by courageous negotiations with a conquering general/king by one simple pastor… but still ruined again economically at the end of the negotiations.

This simple pastor had also seen his family, friends, colleagues and thousands of townspeople and refugees killed by plague and hunger, and during the war years, when he was the sole remaining pastor of the town, he was called upon not only to conduct the funerals of his own wife and children, but also to conduct as many as 40-50 funerals a day for families of friends and neighbors-the townspeople he served so long and knew so well-and of those from the crowded masses of refugees from the war-torn countryside. All-in-all, he performed nearly 5,000 funerals during these years.

The war was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), a time of such brutality, hardship and deprivation that our modern minds cannot (no, really canNOT) begin to comprehend it. The town was Eilenburg, in Saxony. The man was Martin Rinkart. In direct response to all those years of affliction, he penned these words:

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, Whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Martin Rinkart knew at a deep, profound level the truth that blessings aren’t always what we think they are, that gratitude for blessings we often overlook or even condemn as bad luck, affliction and woe is not only possible, but can yield blessings of its own.

Be thankful for your blessings? Yes. But even when you cannot see any “blessings” be thankful still. And know who to give thanks to… and why.

Once again, I say:

Look deeply at the things you are thankful for. SOMEONE other than yourself alone is due thanks for the blessings of possessions and health, family and friends… and it ain’t you, cos no matter what lies our society tells you, neither you nor anyone else—and certainly not I—deserve all the blessings y’all have. Oh, maybe you “deserve” some, but never all.

So WHO do you say “Thank you” to?

tb-posted to STACLU’s Open Thanksgiving Post

*Just a quick “BTW” for y’all: if you do NOT know CPR, LEARN TO DO IT. Seriously. The life I saved the only time I have performed CPR (on my WW) was my own…