Good morning! I love this morning…something just seems so right that on Thanksgiving, a day dedicated to being thankful, we would first gather together...and worship.

The scripture text I’ll refer to this morning is from I Thessalonians 5:16-18. You don’t even have to turn there, it’s very short:

“Rejoice always, pray constantly,
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

This morning, I just want to take a few minutes and muse with you a little.

It struck me this week that living gratefully is something that comes very near to the heart of God. I want to give you three very, very brief “pictures” of thanks, on the theory that a thankful heart might be one of those things that is better “caught” than “taught.”

The first picture comes through scripture (the same scripture I quoted from I Thessalonians 5). It’s from the apostle Paul. Now, Paul apparently wasn’t a very impressive person in a number of ways. One ancient document refers to him as bald-headed, bowlegged, stocky, short, with eyebrows that met in the middle and a big nose! Even in the scriptural letters he defended himself against charges of being weak, or a poor speaker.

Now Paul knew that life wasn’t always good. In fact, he probably knew it better than most people. He was imprisoned, flogged at least five times, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, had to go without food or sleep and narrowly escaped a lynching.

He wrote this letter of I Thessalonians because the young Christians in Thessalonica were confused. They had thought that they would not die before Christ came again. And yet some of them were dying, and Paul wrote to instruct and encourage them. It is in the context of hopelessness, and confusion that he wrote these words:

“Rejoice always, pray constantly,
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Rejoice…(inner joy, not a happy feeling)...pray as you go…and always give thanks.

So, Paul both models for us, and teaches us to give thanks no matter what the circumstance.

The second picture comes from one of my favorite characters from history, a literary one, G.K. Chesterton. He is as different from the Apostle Paul as anyone could be. Chesterton was six-foot four, over 3oo pounds, unruly curly hair, a bear of a man with a squeaky little voice, usually seen with a cape, a crumpled hat and a walking stick. He came to faith in Christ a little later in life, a fabulously articulate man who entertained large crowds with his wit and intelligence, and loved to debate with people like George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell.

Chesterton wrote 80 books, hundreds of poems, 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, theologian, debater, columnist, publisher, and wrote for the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Rarely have I read about a person who had so many IDEAS.

Toward the very end of his life, Chesterton finally caved into pressure to write an autobiography, which I just finished reading. It’s the strangest autobiography ever written, because Chesterton was very reluctant to talk about himself. So he talked about many people and situations, talked about his faith in Christ, and you only get Chesterton in glimpses and pieces.

Approaching the end of the autobiography, (which he finished just a couple weeks before he died), you find him trying to sum up his journey.

He said “I hope…it is not pompous…to call the chief idea of my life…[can’t you imagine a hush falling over the room to glean from this man with so many ideas?]…the idea…of taking things with gratitude, not taking things for granted.”

Chesterton teaches us that there are few things as important as cultivating a grateful heart.

The third picture comes from contemporary life, and the trip I went on to Kenya last year. We were near the shores of Lake Victoria, staying with a ministry partner couple, Lillian (a social worker in area) and Ezekiel (aPentecostal pastor). They live in a rented house just off the lake, not a bad house by the standards, which is to say a trickle of water and no electricity. When the sun goes down it is absolutely black and you have dinner and talk by candelight. The HIV/Aids rate in the area is probably over 50%, everywhere there are children being raised by grandparents or taken in by families and widows.

Every evening, we would come back from long days: visiting people, praying with folks that were sick, seeing schools, visiting widows and children orphaned from HIV/AIDS. It was just before dark. We would walk into the house, and when we were all inside, Ezekiel would start to pray in his deep and fiery voice:

“Thank you, Lord Jesus, for bringing us through another day. Thank you Lord for strong bodies. Thank you that your son Jesus Christ was sent for our sake. Thank you for the safety of this house.”

Every time, without fail, when you entered the house, you prayed long prayers of thanksgiving, for things small and large. It was lovely.

Lillian and Ezekiel teach us to give thanks…in the moment.

Rejoice always, pray constantly,
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

If we did this one thing, practiced giving thanks, over a long period of time. It would change us. We would be different people. We would live in a different world.

And so this morning in our prayer time, we’re going to do exactly this, practice giving thanks.