Adventures in the Word

Out of breath and still I lag behind
my son who’s already lapped me once,
his longer strides will never fail
to outpace mine, but I really don’t mind.

His two miles to my one just
shows how far he’ll go past me.
He’ll do things I’ve never done;
he’ll see things I’ve never seen.

The days and hours I’ve spent
on things I knew would never last,
I now can weigh in flab and count in vacant
eyes that look for answers I don’t have.

I wonder: where did the hours go?
Tell me: what do I have to show
for the artificial pixel shows,
for endless hours on the go?

How can I know my life won’t die
and shrivel up from wishing I’d done more –
a slow but certain death of secret regrets,
I must get off this carousel of lies.

I’m slowing down and feel the uphill climb,
one day my son will come behind this way,
I hope I can give him hope enough to get up
this last steep incline they call Golgotha.

– David Herin

“I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.” – Mt 11:25

This post is a little late for the Thanksgiving holiday, but I don’t think it’s ever too late to think about thanksgiving itself.

What is the opposite of thanksgiving? I ask that because it always helps me understand the essence of something if I can get at its precise opposite or see a shade of its missing meaning.

Take for example:
envy – contentment
patience – aggression
faith – cynicism
hope – disappointment
love – apathy

thanksgiving – self-sufficiency.

Of course the obvious opposite to thanksgiving is ungratefulness, but that’s like saying the way to avoid overeating on turkey and dressing is to ‘under eat’ it. Not very helpful.

To see thanksgiving in this light, let’s inspect its foundations. I say, “thank you,” when you give me something or you do something for me. So thanksgiving is a response to something that I didn’t have before. But that response assumes that I’m aware that you gave it to me. For example, you might see me reading in a dim light and turn on a light for me; but if I don’t notice that you did it, it would be impossible for me to say thanks. I’ll just go merrily on enjoying my light.

So too often we fail to give sincere thanks because, we live under the illusion of our self-sufficiency. Too easily we assume that we can handle most, if not all of our needs. But what a huge deception!

But just to remind you, here’s a few things that we too quickly forget and “take for granted.” These things are mostly outside of our control; I’ll list them and then give a quick example.

economy – what if the price of oil causes a recession or even a depression?
security – imagine terror striking the US again
weather – drought hits Georgia
health – cancer incidence goes up
time/location – what if you were born in Afghanistan in the 1930s?
work – your job suddenly becomes expendable
family – an unexpected twist strikes at home

A change in anyone of these areas would profoundly affect us and radically change our lives and how ‘self-sufficient’ we feel. If we could only see that – not only are we NOT self-sufficient – we are actually pitiable and quite fragile. Thank God that he has pitied us and loves us and has come to our rescue in Jesus.

Thank God: He “remembers that we are but dust.”