Were any of you on Queen Anne Avenue this morning about 7 AM? No? Good, then I can tell this story! I was sitting at my desk, that looks out over the avenue, and a man walked down the sidewalk here in front of the church about 7 a.m. He was probably in his fifties, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t know him, though afterwards I wondered. Anyway, as he walked, he looked up and saw me working in the window. And he stopped, got a big smile on his face, and with very animated gestures pointed to himself and then up to the sky several times, clearly trying to communicate: “I am thankful to God this morning!” And we join him in that.

Around 800 BC there was a man named Jonah. Remember Jonah? Remember how he just flat out ran away from God?

God said “I want you to go to Ninevah.”…way up north and east of where Jonah was. Jonah said “No way.” He tried to go west, across the whole Mediterranean over to Spain, to Tarshish. That was the diametric opposite direction of where he was supposed to go. Jonah was “fleeing from face of the Lord.” And it got him in trouble.

Big trouble. Instead of heading off on a mission trip to the glory of God, he found himself sitting in the belly of a fish.

Jonah sat there in the belly of a fish, 3 days, 3 nights. I don’t know what you think, but sounds to me like he’s in a pretty crummy place, regardless of whose fault it was.

So what’s he do? He prays. Pretty spiritual. Maybe I’d pray also:

“Lord, get me out of here, quick!”

But actually, that’s not what Jonah prays. Jonah prays pretty eloquently, prays through a bunch of the Psalms, thanks God for listening to him, thanks God for saving him, and in fact made up his mind for how to pray in the future:

“My prayer came to you…the voice of thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving in the middle of a fish.

About 31 AD, Jesus Christ stood outside of a tomb. In it was the body of one of his favorite people, Lazarus, from one of his favorite families, Mary and Martha’s. Their brother Lazarus had died. And no matter what would soon happen, no matter who Jesus was, it was a black moment. Jesus himself, as he looked around at his friends torn with grief, was deeply moved and troubled in his spirit.

And when he drew closer to that tomb containing the body of one he loved, in the shortest and perhaps most remarkable sentence in all scripture…he wept. Jesus wept.

And when he came to the door of the tomb itself, once again…(third time) we’re told, he was deeply moved.

And as he stood there, “Jesus looked up and said: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.” He prayed. Thanksgiving in the midst of death and pain.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln addressed the young United States. At that time, of course, the States were in the midst of the Civil War, a horrible, brutal human tragedy which weighed heavily on Lincoln’s heart. And yet despite this, Lincoln urged the people of the United States to, at the same time, recognize the blessings which had also been showered upon them, blessings like “fruitful fields, healthful skies, the work of plough, of ship, of ax” that had yielded provisions like never before.

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November…as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation…”

Thanksgiving in the midst…of a civil war.

In 2006 I traveled to Kenya, Africa. I talked to widows, I visited gravesites,

I met people who died of AIDS only days after we met them, I spent time with people whose lives were full of ministry to orphans when whole families had died. I saw people living in more terrible physical conditions than I wish ever to see again.

But always, always, always when we prayed, these people would begin their prayers like this: “Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, we thank you for your many, many blessings you have given us. We thank you for sending your son Jesus Christ…”

Thanksgiving in the midst of poverty and sickness.

In 2006, I don’t know exactly where you find yourself, but I suspect a mix.

I suspect some of life is wonderful, and that there are some difficult things. After experiencing some of these things in Africa, I have spent plenty of time trying to figure out why: why I was born in the time and place I was, why I have had such blessings of friends, of family, of education, of safety, of food when so, so many in the world have not.

I have had thoughts like “these blessings put a great responsibility on me to live in ways that reach out to people in hardship.” And I do think that’s true.

I have kept asking the question, “Lord, why has it happened this way? Why me?” And mostly I haven’t come up with a lot of good answers. In fact, I’ve come up with only one answer: at the very least…to live gratefully.

In the midst of not understanding the injustices of the world, and even as I try to right such wrongs…I want to choose to live my life thankfully. It’s not the whole answer, it’s just a beginning place for us.

• That like Jonah, like Jesus, like Lincoln, we might offer to God our thanksgivings. Even in the midst of difficult places.
• That we might take opportunity to give thanks to God for the blessings of life.
• That we might have the eyes of our hearts open to the places we see good, and beauty and know the love of Christ in this world, and the promise of the next, and to continually be returning thanks for them.