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| Why bother? |
A glance around my Facebook feed
this morning produced some sharp contrasts.
There were all the usual
suspects, rounded up and smiling: professional family portraits, amateur shots
of glowing landscapes, pictures of pies galore. Most were captioned with some
permutation of the word “thankful.”
Then there were the others. Quotidian.
Candid.
“Just having stress-free cereal
and playing Minecraft this morning because it’s what we like to do.”
“I used to try to do all the
fixings, but this year I’m just doing what I like.”
“I’m going out for Chinese food.”
“The stress of the turkey fixings
is on its last gasp in society. I just don’t care enough to bother anymore.”
“I made my pumpkin pie on
Tuesday. Why wait?”
Why wait, indeed? In a society that can have anything at any moment, what value is there in being forced to mark special days off with food and feasting and fellowship? Isn’t it all just a bunch of unnecessary bother and work? And believe me, I know the sort of work Thanksgiving involves. You have to travel. You have to dress up, or clean up, or shut up about politics, or step up and volunteer to make the yeast rolls (even though you have two kids with the sniffles at home). Your mother interrupts your precious day off of school and demands that you hand-peel twenty pounds of damp potatoes. You have to plot and plan how to use the oven for days ahead of schedule—and then it breaks. Why put up with all those demands? Why put up with the tyranny of Thanksgiving expectations—familial, edible, or personal? Can’t we all just sit at home and eat Chinese in peace?
Maybe we could, if Thanksgiving
was just about us. But this holiday is one of the last refuges of the Christian
worldview in our society—a holiday that is about family and God. Thanksgiving
is about focusing outward. It’s really hard, after all, to thank yourself
for Chinese food, or to thank mom for leftover cereal.
But a steaming turkey, carved in clean
cuts and dripping fresh gravy? Mountains of mashed potatoes? Slabs of stuffing?
Piles of pies upon pies upon pies? That takes community, a small army of people
and the love to bind them all together, and it generates thankfulness. It may
never occur to you to thank someone for the cereal, but if you can stand in
front of a glorious feast (trying to figure out which spare corner of the table
to put the buttermilk pie on) and not thank God for it, your soul is just as
starved as your stomach. That is what the obligation to feast is supposed to
lead to—not fear and weariness, but gratitude.
So thank them for it all. Thank Mom
for the cooking. Thank your wife for sticking around another year. Thank the
kids for peeling potatoes. Thank your father-in-law for agreeing to let you
marry his baby girl three years ago. Thank the neighbors for another year of
peaceful détente. Thank a few of your heroes for the joy they’ve brought into
your life.
Then thank God for everything
else: for a wonderful trip “across the pond” to welcome my favorite British
sister-in-law into the family. For a multitude of nieces and nephews and
siblings. For singing. For a community that loves to sing as often as possible. For a pile of laughing in-laws. For a job that I love and students
that make it worthwhile. For a country that allows me to keep a shotgun under
my bed. For movies. For superhero cartoons. For progress towards an adoption.
For scads and scads of books. For bookshelves. For massive California redwoods
growing and stretching and trailing moss from their ears. For chuffing steam
trains. For Augustine of Hippo. For buttermilk pie.
And yes, you have to thank Him.
He demands it. And yes, it’s inconvenient and obligatory and we usually don’t
want to. But the tyranny of thanksgiving is how we truly learn our place in
this universe, down here amongst all those other annoying immortals. Otherwise,
we can get self-centered and cocky; we assume that if we want to eat cereal,
than we can eat cereal, blast it!
But I’d lay money no one ever learned
something about heaven eating Fruit Loops.
We thank thee then, O Father, for all things bright and good,
The seed-time and the harvest, our life, our health, our food.
No gifts have we to offer for all
Thy love imparts;
But that which Thou desirest: our
humble, thankful hearts.
All good gifts around us are sent
from heaven above;
Then thank the Lord, O thank the
Lord for all His love.
