A Thanksgiving meditation

I'll give thanks to the Lord always, and I'll say it again, I give thanks, because God's steadfast love  never ceases and his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness!

The heavens and the earth are filled with his glory; the handiwork of his fingers  is evident everywhere.

I see his glory when I crane my neck to look up into the heavens on a clear night; my mind cannot grasp the vastness of the skies, but he knows every single star by its name.

How powerful is this God?

And when I walk through the forest by day I revel in the blazing tapestries there. 

I think about the miracles in a single droplet of water;

and the complexities of the microscopic worlds within each cell;

and the billions of worlds within this tiny patch of the world, 

invisible to the naked eye and oblivious by-passer, but 

quietly, efficiently, steadfastly, 

season after season, 

carrying out their marvellous functions.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

But not everything is as it ought to be, Lord, and I've had questions.  Hard questions that have kept me up at night.

By coincidence, by sheer luck of the draw, or maybe by your decree, I happen to have been born with a body that works as its meant to work and a brain that does everything it should. I live in a blessed land where my needs are met and provisions are plentiful, and I've never been one night without a roof over my head or gone to sleep with gnawing hunger in my belly.  

But I've worked in a place where people struggle through every day, and the smallest tasks are daily ordeals. Their hands don't work like mine and their minds play horrible tricks on their bodies and they don't get to enjoy the simple things in life that I do - like having a friend, and buttoning my own shirt.

And I've been to places where life is hard; where it's not always safe to be a child or a woman or be old; where those with crippled bodies lay like scraps of barely recognizable humanity in the dirty streets; where poverty extends even to the skinny, scabby, joyless dogs that run in packs through the city streets.

Where life is fragile and the population never gets very old and children don't have playgrounds.

What about them, God? Does not every single one bear your image, like I do? Does not each one count as much as I do?

By your cross I know that the answer is "Yes!" They count. Every. Single. One. You love the world so much that you sent your Son to give his life that they, and we, may live. On the cross he took on himself the crushing burden of man's sin, the only righteous one for all the unrighteous ones. By the stripes from the lashes on his back comes our healing. And now the hope and joy of belonging to you, of knowing things are not always going to be like this, is for everyone.

You are the God who is in every detail of the universe; you see each inconspicuous sparrow that loses its flight, each flower that fades, each tear that falls. You care about the desires in our hearts and our tender joys and sorrows, and you count each hair on our heads. You are so mindful of us all and with cords of loving-kindness you draw our rebellious selves to you. "Come," you say,  "Eat and drink, feast yourselves on me, without money and without price!" 

 And Jesus shows us the way to live, and he shows us that it is we who need to love others with the love you love us. We need to take care of our neighbours who live beside us and around the world, and we need to share with anyone who is in need out of our plenty. We are to take care of them like we take care of ourselves. Poverty, and every other evil, will be overcome by good that is done in Jesus' name. 

 

But even if we fail, and even if the mountains crumble and fall, your love remains and your plan to redeem and restore will be fulfilled, because no matter what, you are a God who keeps his promises.

And for this I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exalt in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.