What If There Is Nothing To Be Thankful For?

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac 

How are you feeling this year?

We teach our people, after all, to say, “God is good, all the time, and all the time God is good!”

We call on people in churches to raise their hands in praise, to clap, to rejoice.
Even our most conservative churches can at least get a hearty “Amen!” on, right?

We read Bible verses publicly in worship that can leave no doubt regarding how good we have it;

Praise the Lord, all nations!

Extol him, all peoples!

For great is his steadfast love toward us,

and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.

Praise the Lord![i]

Do you have that tradition during the holidays where you go around the table and each person states what they are thankful for this year? I love that time! I love that time because I actually have things to be thankful about in my life and I love to share the joys of that experience with others!

But I wonder how people who, legitimately, don’t have anything to be thankful for, feel in those moments?

Is it ok, to be in a place where you can’t be thankful at this moment? Holidays with depression is hard. I know what you are saying, “Come on, Pastor, that is not true. We can always thank God for life, health, and strength.”[ii] Except some people are grieving the loss of the life of someone they love this year. Except some people don’t have health this year but, rather, recently received the worst of news. Except some people are not strong at all; they are tired, beaten, and exhausted, and may even be one breath closer to giving up.

I remember when my young wife was lying, near death, in a hospital bed from multiple strokes with no sign of a diagnosis, much less a cure, in sight. I remember being by her bedside days on end with nothing changing. I remember when blood flow got so critically low in her brain she had aphasia; she could not remember her words, forgot my name, and eventually forgot who I was, and reverted to being like a mere confused child, whom I could not help. Was God any less good then? I know, theologically, no, God is “the same yesterday and today and forever.”[iii] However, I assure you, had you come waltzing into the hospital room and belted out, “God is good all the time.” And expected me to reply, “And all the time God is Good!” You might have gotten a rather shocking reply from a Pastor.

It is ok, to be too hurt, too broken, too beaten, to not “feel the cheer of this time of year!” Just in case you skimmed it, King David was not just full of cheers, praises, and Psalms of Thanks, David hit such emotional lows as I should hope never in my life to hit. But the point is, both ends of the spectrum are legitimate placements of the spectrum for Christians.

This year, no matter the holiday in question, why not stop trying to force people to come up to where you think they ought to be, and you go down to where they are. That is what Jesus does. He does not call us up to His level.  He meets us at our hurts, our struggles, and our needs. He is incarnate with our pain and he walks that path with us.

This morning in my devotion time I was struck deeply but a line in Psalms 91:15 that I have missed over and over again,

“I (the LORD) will be with him in trouble,”

Yes, yes, yes! There it is! There is that one thing to be thankful for even if all other gratitudes have run out!

• When you lose that job.

• When the doctor gives you bad news.

• When you miss that loved one.

• When the love of your life walks out the door.

• When your addiction threatens to rise up and take you over.

• When that last breath seems so hard to come.

“I, the LORD, will be with you in that trouble,” call on me.

“I, Yahweh, will be with you in that trouble,” Seek me.

When the righteous cry out, and the LORD Yahweh hears them;

    he delivers them from all their troubles.

 The LORD Yahweh is close to the brokenhearted

    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.[iv]

Stop trying to get the brokenhearted to shout out praises, and spread cheer when what they need is to shed their tears. Take them to the foot of the cross to the God of the crushed spirits, broken hearts, and dashed dreams. Take them to the God who, on the cross, cried out, feeling utterly forsaken. Take them to the expressed compassion of the Savior who put your broken self back together again, and keeps doing it, even now, when you ought to know better.

It is like Leonard Cohen sang,

“And love is not a victory march

It’s a cold and it’s a broken “Hallelujah”[v]

The path to a Hallelujah may have to start with a cold broken whisper.

Even in my most broken moments, days, and years, what I clung to was, knowing in the deepest part of the body, heart and core, that Jesus had died for me and that if he decided not to do another thing for me as long as I was on this globe, no one could take away my cold, broken “Hallelujah” of knowing God was still there, and would never stop being there, even if nothing ever got better again. He’d save me eternally in the end … this broken praise, leads to the joy that comes in the morning.

It’s ok, hold tight. Don’t let go. Yahweh will be with you in this trouble. And that is enough for you to be thankful. If that is all you’ve got, you have everything! Hold on to the cold, broken praise. You might be crushed, bruised, and weeping, but God dwells in the midst of your pain, and He holds you up and in the end, leads you to the whispered, “Hallelujah.”

Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah (live at the Montreal Jazz Festival 2008)

Related Articles:

Prayer: Why Even Bother?

The Reserve Of Courage

Breaking Up With Nostalgia

It’s A Beautiful Day

Footnotes:

[i] Ps 117:1-2

[ii] The usual token standbys. Holidays with Depression is hard.

[iii] Hebrews 13:8

[iv] Ps 34:17-18

[v] Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah Song

The post What If There Is Nothing To Be Thankful For? appeared first on Simply Vinnie - Unpacking The Complicated.

Halloween and Biblical Faith 

Is there a Monster under your bed?

By Vinnie MacIsaac

It is interesting to me that the word holiday comes from the linguistic heritage of “Holy Day.” Originally all western “holidays,” were early church holy days. As Western Civilization evolved and multiple stages of development took place this concept for better or worse got lost among us.

This brings me to an idea I’d like to discuss in brief;  Often at this time of year, Christians get all worked up about Halloween. Just check your social media and you will find the endless post, debates, and clever images about the Christian debate of this “holiday.” In fact, Halloween, if you like it or hate it, has a very religious background.  According to The American Desk Encyclopedia, the etymology of the word means hallowed evening or holy evening. It was originally the evening before the day that the church dedicated to remembering the dead in particular the martyrs who gave their lives to keep the faith alive. By the middle-ages, it had evolved to include the concepts of saints and purgatory and then as with most church holidays as they spread out they picked up an arraignment of pagan influences. Soon saints became spirits and it was not long before witches and Jack-o’-lanterns and such were added to the mix.

Reformation day

Clearly, as a Protestant Christian, I can’t and don’t believe in purgatory or praying to dead saints anymore then I can believe in ghosts or witches and Jack-o’-lanterns. But I will tell you what I do very much believe in; I do think we all need to be incredibly thankful and filled with holy gratitude for the millions of martyrs who gave their lives to keep this faith alive.

Martin Luther kick-started the Reformation via Protest!

Speaking of martyrs here is an interesting Halloween fact that most of us lose sight of; October  31st is not only Halloween but is it Reformation Day. It is the day that Martin Luther nailed his  95 Theses on the door of the Schlosskirche church in Wittenberg. While Luther’s objections had been provoked by the practice of Indulgences (the idea that you could pay a fee to the church to be excused of a sin) he set off the firestorm that became the Protestant Reformation. The founding principles of the Protestant Reformation were Sola scriptura (by the Bible alone), Sola fide (justification by faith alone), and Sola gratia (salvation by grace alone). In essence, Protestants wanted to follow their own convictions in matters of faith and be true to what they came to understand to be Biblical faith. And what was the cost of such a noble desire? Estimates of the death toll of the Protestant Reformation greatly vary depending on the faith background of the historian, but it is believed to be somewhere between 50-150 million people died because they were declared heretics for following their own beliefs rather than the Roman Catholic dogma. So again I say, let us remember the martyrs who died to keep this Biblical faith alive!

Oh, how ironic it is that on the very day the world should be celebrating Martin Luther, Religious Liberty, and the free of conviction for all, they are instead fixated on paying honor to evil in its various forms. This Halloween I tell you there is a monster under your bed. Evil has not gone away, religious oppression has not been lifted out of this world, nor has the idea of killing people because of their religious beliefs suddenly disappeared. This Halloween I call you to join in Reformation day and join my protest.

Sola scriptura (By Scripture Alone)
Sola Fide (By Faith Alone)
Sola gratia (By Grace Alone)

I am a Protestant, and I still protest! 

• I protest all who seek to force their convictions unwillingly upon others.

• I protest all who would try to take the liberty of choice in religious matters away from the masses.

• I protest all who label others with terms like heretic so that they can simply dismiss their views and attack their character rather than their ideas.

I protest all who think it would be better for someone to be dead than to believe wrong (differently) or even not at all.

And lastly, I protest all who use religion as an excuse to hate, discriminate, and use physical violence or murder as a means to an end.

Join me, if only for this day, and become a Protestant this Halloween, rather then a demon in disguise hiding under the bed of religion.

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