“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Phil. 4:8
Hello, my friends!
This year, Thanksgiving and Advent come back to back, and it’s got me thinking, in the quick transition between the two, of the deep connection between gratitude and Advent’s first theme of hope.
How these two themes are so interdependent and intertwined and yet so paradoxical. One is strength for today, and the other is the bright hope for tomorrow.
And too often they can feel mutually exclusive.
Often, we strive for one to the omission of the other. Either we are grateful for today or hopeful for tomorrow. It can feel safer to give up on hope and resign ourselves that all we have is this moment. But this is vulnerable to the slippery slope of despair or cynicism. Because, as life goes on, the unavoidable pains have a way of forcing us into a bleak resignation.
Or we can choose the alternative, the detached, pie in the sky, hopefulness that ignores the present.
But this hope has a texture of avoidance. Of willful ignorance to the pain and the suffering and the confusion in the world around us. We can easily become so heavenly-minded that we’re of no earthly good, as the saying goes.
This leads not to honest hope, but a dupable naivete.
The answer is to somehow hold on to both. To the broken beauty of today, and to the unfilled hopefulness of what is to come.
The already and the not yet. But this is easier said than done. Usually, we vacillate between the two poles and fail to hold the tension between the seeming opposites.
No one has taught me more about this exercise of living in the paradoxes than GK Chesterton.
He was an intellectual giant and yet writes with such whimsy and wonder. He was a giant of a man, and yet had the heart of a gleeful child. He saw the world through the eyes of curiosity, discovery, and wonder, and believed that the way forward was to relearn the magic of the world all around us.
For example, he writes,
“Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”
Now while this may at first glance appear to be a childish argument for the myth of Santa, this appears in defense for the magical awe and wonder we once had and have lost for the creator Himself. The myths we invent are desperate ways to try to reclaim the beauty we once knew and are all around us. It is the wonder that leads us from the beauty of creation to the brilliant artistry of the creator. And remaining in this reality is a matter of will.
Thanksgiving is a chosen state of mind. Thanksgiving can acknowledge the brokenness of life but sets its heart on the greater realities of what is ahead. Of the city that awaits us. Of the beauty that compels us to live lives of meaning and sacrifice and generosity.
That our hope is secure, which frees us from clutching to the things of this earth.
But it also reminds us that this life is a treasured gift. Every breath, every bite, every bit of tenderness and compassion. All of it is filled with magic. And God desires that our hearts would be re-sensitized to it.
That we would rediscover that sense of wonder. That we would cherish it in our hearts and dwell upon it in our minds. That it would shape our appetites and leave us hungry for more.
Chesterton writes, "I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
My prayer for us is that this Thanksgiving would be filled with hopefulness for tomorrow and grounded in the deep gratitude of all that God has done, is doing, and will one day complete.
Take heart, my friends, as we look ahead to the birth of Christ. As we remember, with hopefulness, that we live in the tension between two advents, two comings. We celebrate the birth of Christ and look ahead with hope and wonder to the second advent and his glorious return.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!