(The following is my article for the Shawnee newspaper, The News Star, this coming Saturday, November 24, 2012. As it deals with giving thanks, I thought a preview on my blog was appropriate. Happy Thanksgiving!)
“O
to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let that grace now like a fetter bind my
wandering heart to Thee: prone to
wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave
the God I love; here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts
above.”
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,
Presbyterian (USA) Hymnal, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990
By the time this article is printed,
Thanksgiving will be two days gone and all that will remain are the
leftovers. For some of us, we will be
setting our caps for Advent, others strictly Christmas. But either way, the great race of the holiday
season is now on! Even so, I wanted to
take a moment and offer up a little thanks.
I have much to be thankful for this
Thanksgiving; a whole list of something’s to be honest. But I want to speak about the one thing that
I don’t give thanks for often enough, and that’s grace.
For me singing is as much a time of
prayer as spoken prayer, and whenever I sing the above verse from the hymn
“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” I am reminded again of how truly in debt
to grace I really am. I know that in
church circles the word grace is
bandied about frequently. We speak it in
our prayers, we sing it in our hymns, we hear it in our liturgies and sermons,
but do we fully grasp the enormity of what grace, God’s grace, means? I’m sure I don’t.
The concept of grace is difficult to
define. It requires language that I’m
not sure we have. Here’s what I know/believe
about the grace we receive from God. It
is unearned. It is unconditional. And, much as we don’t like to admit it, it is
unfair. My congregation has heard at
least one sermon about the latter. Grace
is unfair. People I don’t always believe
deserve it receive it. Yet that’s what
makes it grace.
Truth be told, I don’t deserve grace
either. But I have been on the receiving
end of grace more often than I can count, perhaps even more often than I
realize. When I’ve fallen on my
backside, literally and figuratively, it has been grace that has picked me up
again. When I have made mistakes that
still make me cringe with shame, grace has offered me a hand of
forgiveness. I have met grace in all of
its various guises – a child, an old person, a homeless man, a teller at the
bank, an unexpected friend.
I also echo Dietrich Bonhoeffer when
I say that grace is not cheap. It may be
freely given and unearned, but when we recognize its presence in our lives, I
think we’re called upon to respond.
Bonehoeffer’s response was to risk and ultimately lose his life. In the face of that sacrifice, the least I
can do is to respond with thanks.
So what am I thankful for in this
season of thanksgiving? I am thankful
for my wonderful, creative children who never fail to keep me on my toes. I am thankful for family and friends who love
me in spite of myself. I am thankful for
a congregation who teaches me new definitions of grace every day. I am thankful for a home when I know so many
go without. I am thankful for the
advantages I have received in my lifetime: education, travel,
encouragement. I also know far too many
people live with the lack of those essentials.
Most importantly, I am thankful for grace, which is the underpinning of
all the rest. “O to grace how great a
debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”
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