Recently I came
across an article in the Wall Street
Journal by Anne Marie Chaker entitled, “Early-Bird Special: Some Families
Can’t Wait for Thanksgiving” The byline read, “More Americans are celebrating
Turkey Day earlier than the fourth week of November, citing cheaper travel and
lower stress.” The article indicated that people chose the early-bird
celebration in an attempt to: avoid travel logjams; snag cheaper travel deals; escape
the commotion of the food frenzy at grocery stores; and have less competition
for days off around the holiday. A
recent survey found that 16% of those polled are choosing to celebrate
Thanksgiving early, and another 13% are willing to celebrate the holiday
earlier in the future. The chief executive of the polling firm, John Dick,
concluded, “More people are willing to sacrifice tradition to fit things more
easily into their lives.”
Has our nation become such a culture of
convenience that even our holidays now have to fit into what is convenient and
comfortable for us? In reality what is supposed to be convenient often does not
produce comfort. Consider a stop at a convenience store to get a pack of mints.
There you find a person ahead of you purchasing a string of lottery tickets.
The convenience store now becomes an uncomfortable waste of time. Think about a
trip to the drive-through to grab some convenience food. The endless line of
cars seems to move at a crawl. People choosing to bypass the drive-through
sometimes enter the establishment and exit before you even get to the speaker
to place your order! What was to be a convenience has become an aggravation.
Why
does one crave convenience when it is sometimes less than we expect? Perhaps a
look at the term “convenience” will help us understand. A dictionary highlights
various uses of the word: “1. the quality of being suitable to one's comfort,
purposes, or needs; 2. personal comfort or advantage; 3. something that increases
comfort or saves work; 4. a suitable or agreeable time.” It struck me the word
“comfort” was highlighted in the definition. Apparently people desire
convenience hoping it will produce some level of comfort. Individuals are longing
in an uncomfortable world to find some sort of comfort.
Many people associate comfort with the act
of giving thanks. How many times have we sat at a Thanksgiving celebration and heard
people give thanks for the comfortable blessings they received during the year.
Somehow the pains of the past year are temporarily and conveniently erased from
minds and one reflects only on the things that made them comfortable. The
reality is that life is filled with both comfort and pain. We can understand
giving thanks for the comforts of life. Can we give thanks for the pains of
life? Frankly, pain seems like an inconvenient intrusion into what one expects
and desires from life.
There is an account in the Bible of two
men who held a “thanksgiving service” in the midst of their painful life experience.
Paul and Silas in Acts 16:16-25 had done a good thing by releasing a girl
possessed of an evil spirit that controlled her. Men who owned her as a slave
and had used her divination to make “her masters much profit,” became enraged.
They had Paul and Silas arrested, brought false charges against them, and
caused the magistrates to “tear off their cloths and to be beaten with rods.”
To add further pain, “When they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them
into prison… and fastened their feet in stocks.” One would assume there was
nothing here to give thanks for in an atmosphere of injustice, abuse, and pain!
However, the Bible records, “But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and
singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”
What went through the other prisoners
minds? Maybe they thought: “They are crazy!” or “They must be delirious and
don’t know what is going on!” or “They are some kind of religious fanatics” or
“What in the world makes these guys act this way?” The account seems to
indicate that Paul and Silas were not focusing upon convenience or comfort.
They were focusing upon God: who is overall; who has made promises to never
leave or forsake them; who is bigger than their circumstances and pain; and who
is able to deliver his children one way or another. Certainly, this was not a
convenient thanksgiving setting for these men.
This thanksgiving season certainly will
not be a convenient thanksgiving for many. The blessings of the past year are
shrouded in the pain of living in a sin-scared world. The remaining members of
the small Baptist church, their family, and friends in Sutherland Springs,
Texas, certainly are aware of this. They join many in the world who have had
painful life experiences of death, disease, disappointment, depression, and a
host of other issues surrounding their lives. It is in these times focus will
determine the ability to somehow process the seeming unfathomable heartaches of
life.
Paul and Silas processed their pain by
focusing upon their God. What does the
patriarch of the Holcombe family of which eight members were murdered in that
Baptist church focus upon? Joe Holcombe, 86, who mourns the loss of the generations he had raised, told
an interviewer in a
quiet voice. “We know where they are now,” he responded. “All of our family
members, they’re all Christian. And it won’t be long until we’re with them.”
His thanksgiving was on the certainty of his family’s present and eternal state,
and the prospect of a future reunion. Thanksgiving is always convenient even in
painful times when we maintain the right focus.
