Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God, for I yet give thanks to the one who is my help and my God.
- Psalm 43:5
Having now come through our second Thanksgiving of Covid we may well be feeling continued heaviness and disquiet. Certainly things are better than they were last year at this time, but just as certain they are not what most of us had hoped them to be at this point. Not only are we not back to “normal” I have a strong sense that what lies ahead will only be a little like what came before. So I feel a disquiet and I also feel joy in the trust that God has much good in store.
At my Thanksgiving table, as I suspect at many Thanksgiving tables, before we start to eat everyone takes a turn sharing something that they are grateful for. In the past, focusing on gratitude has felt appropriate for the celebration but this year I prompted everyone with something a little different: what are you thankful for?
It’s the difference between an interior experience and an exterior expression. I feel gratitude and ideally the awareness of that feeling changes my external attitude, but when I express thanks I am affirmatively declaring my connectedness, my dependence, my awareness that something has been done for me, that I have received something beyond my own doing.
I am thankful for the strength of the spirit I have heard in the words that have sustained my faith during these hard years, I am thankful that our pastors have been called to the ministry and push us to listen to God’s call in our own lives, I am thankful for communities of welcome where we can struggle through together.
Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and you your sanctuary;
That I may go to the altar of God, to the God of my joy and gladness; and on the harp I will give thanks to you, O God my God.
- Psalm 43: 3-4