“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to
gain what he cannot lose.�
We sit around in our creature comforts and speak
freely of how thankful we are in Christ.
But what happens when these comforts are stripped from us? Will we remain thankful? Will we still treasure the eternal blessing
of Christ over the temporal blessings of this world?
“What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world
and yet forfeits his soul?�
I am constantly convicted of my all too reliant
flesh on the comforts of this life. How easily
can my heart of gratitude come crumbling down in the face of trials? Perhaps it’s precisely in those times that the
Lord inclines His ear to us, testing our hearts to see if we are still
singing. It begs the question, if I rejoice
on the mountaintop, and I’m bitter in the valley, is my worship dependent upon
circumstance? And is that worship at all?
One of my favorite worship songs speaks this well,
taken from the life of Job:
“Blessed be Your Name in
the land that is plentiful, Where Your streams of
abundance flow, blessed be Your Name. Blessed be Your Name
when I’m found in the desert place, When I walk through the
wilderness, blessed be Your Name.
Blessed be Your Name
when the sun’s shining down on me, When the world’s all as
it should be, blessed be Your Name. Blessed be Your Name on
the road marked with suffering, When there’s pain in the
offering, blessed be Your Name.
You give and take away,
You give and take away, My heart will choose to
say, Lord blessed be Your Name.�
This Thanksgiving I found myself far from the
family, the friends, and the feast that typically surround the holiday. Usually my greatest challenge in the past has
been digesting my meal after gorging myself, and then finding a comfortable
place to pass out if I even make it that far… oh the Thanksgiving nap!
This year looked a little different. My normal comforts and really anything that
remotely symbolized such a familiar tradition were taken away. What would Thanksgiving look like
once it was stripped of all the tradition, the decorations, the culture… what would be
left?
At an early hour I woke up to the morning song of
jungle wildlife. I lay there on the
floor of my bamboo hut, pondering the bizarreness of the situation; Thanksgiving
in the Malaysian jungle… really? Is this really happening?
We begin our hike up to the village, traveling
through a strange terrain of overgrown grasses, abnormally large leaves on
plants I’ve never seen, and an abundance of palm trees. Half way through this daily journey we had
the luxury of wading through a river. Beautiful
and green would be an understatement.
Ministry consisted of working on the village farm…
it was a wonderful time for us guys to bond with each other, as well as work
alongside the locals. It made for great
conversation and for a tangible feeling of what life is like in the
jungle. A simple life. Not complicated. Where community and relationship are priority;
not out of duty, but out of necessity. There
are no rooms to divide families, and village responsibilities require everyone’s
help. No running water, electricity, or many of the
comforts I would naturally think these people “need� to have.
As I stepped back and observed their
quality of life, the depth of their relationships, I suddenly didn’t feel like I
needed to teach or show these people anything… it was I, it was us, that
needed to be learning from them.
(my buddy Tim playing football with the village kids)
Okay, back to Thanksgiving… so while working in
the field we get our break for lunch… Thanksgiving lunch in the jungle
here we come!
The five of us sit down around a table that has
previously been prepared by the local pastor’s wife. Let me describe the table. Five plates, three spoons (two of us will be
eating with our hands), a pitcher of mystery juice (tastes like warm bubble gum
flavored milk with a slightly medicinal aftertaste), a large bowl in the center
of the table full of white rice, and three other smaller bowls of mystery
vegetable (something like spinach).
As I’m scooping food onto my plate, I realize that
my meal actually consists of white rice, this wannabe spinach, and fish head (it was mixed in with the vegetable). And for
some reason the fish heads are all missing their bodies. Hmm…
Not much temptation here to forget God amidst
worldly comfort. While there was a
possible temptation to be ungrateful or bitter, I found myself in quite the
opposite condition… rather thankful for the rice and fish-head that was before
me. Perhaps I found myself more thankful
for this meal than previously when entire spreads were made available.
Turned out to be one of the most memorable
thanksgiving meals I will ever have. A lesson
in thankfulness, a lesson on valuing eternal blessings over temporal ones, and
a lesson in valuing and enjoying the temporal blessings in a way that is God-honoring
rather than God-forgetting.
May this holiday season be a time of giving,…
giving of all things that will pass away: time, money, energy, self. And may it be a time of thanksgiving… for that
which we cannot lose: the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus.
