Thankful every day

“We should find something to be thankful for every day.”

Call me kooky, but that sounds awfully “Oprah-esque” to me.  “Surely SOMEthing has happened today for which you can be thankful!!”

Well, in our cush surroundings and manufactured ease, that might be correct, but I have traveled and read enough to wonder if that actually is a universal truism.

I read about a man in the Gulag who was thrown into a 5'x10' cell with a bench lining three walls and a door in the fourth.  There were nine other men already in the cell, each in their place on the bench, staring at the door with a “toilet” in the center of the cell.

Every man was required to stare at the door at all times, never making a sound, because they never knew when the guard might open the slot through which food was, occasionally, placed.  If the guard suddenly peered into the cell and every man was not looking at the door, everyone in the cell would be beaten.

The situation of each man provided little opportunity for something exciting and “thank-worthy” to occur.

I have walked the packed-mud “streets” of the poverty stricken district of Belen in Iquitos, Peru where the mud is held together by garbage and venders have 5-gallon buckets full of plecostomus (“plecostomuses?” “plecostomi?”, a rather messy, prehistoric looking aquarium fish) for the truly poor to take home for a scrumptuous dinner of “gross-and-grits.”

God has so fashioned the human psyche that people are able to create enjoyment, even in such dire surroundings.

There were the kids playing soccer with a ball that had no air because of the huge hole in one side.

There was the man with no arms or legs who someone had deposited on a piece of plastic on the ground, turned on a boom box, and he was “dancing” to the music hoping for pennies.  While some might be tempted to look away in embarrassment, many gave him money to honor his insistence on doing what he could to earn a living.

I met a man who was a survivor of the Bataan death march.  He had been transported to Japan and forced to work in the salt mines there.  Sticks were placed behind his knees and he was forced to kneel in a bowed position until muscles screamed and joints popped.  At 6' 4" tall, the tiny passage-ways of the salt mines were brutal.

His wife called me one day and said, “He is ready to tell some stories for the first time since the war.  If you want to hear them, you better get down here.”  We took our kids, heard stories of torment, and he died 10 days later.

I wonder if there was ever a day he found it difficult to find something “thank-worthy.” 

I have not read the colossal work by Eric Metaxas on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that powerful German theologian who was captured, tortured, and hung by piano wire on the express orders of Hitler just days before the war ended, but I have read plenty of other things about him, and by him.  I would suspect Metaxas would be the ultimate authority to corroborate this story, but I read elsewhere that when the liberators went into Bonhoeffer’s cell after the war they found something carved into his bunk.  It read:

“I do not know if God exists.

But, if He does, He knows where I am, and He loves me.”

We can read that and say or think negative things about Bonhoeffer’s faith: but I am in no position to be doing that.  I have never experienced the imprisonment, torture, and isolation which would have driven him to such a statement.

But frankly, I find a great deal instructive about such a missive.

Bonhoeffer was beaten, sleep deprived, starved, ridiculed and abused by a mechanism of evil it is hard to even envision.

I can only imagine the days of complete despair, of wondering what lay ahead, of anxiety like the vast majority of us have never experienced.

And yet, there was a foundation.

We might lose sight of the foundation because of the offal which was heaped on it in the statement, “I do not know if God exists.”

Torment can produce some terrifying conclusions!

John the Baptist, the great herald who boldly exclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), is the same John the Baptist who sent friends to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20).

“How could John, ‘the greatest of all the prophets,’ the one commissioned to prepare the way for the coming of the King, ask such a question of the very One he had previously proclaimed to be ‘THE ONE’?!?”

I have no clue, and I hope I am never presented with the same situations as John where I am invited to similar doubts, but let’s scrape away the pile of doubt at the first part of Bonhoeffer’s statement and look more closely at the foundation which under-girded his life. 

Even in the midst of the horrors of Nazi torture and imprisonment, and even in the crushing darkness of doubt, Bonhoeffer held to a foundation which extended beyond his misery, hunger, fear and even questions.  He held to a foundation of, “If He does, He knows. . . and He loves. . .”

There are very few immutables in life because everything changes; even those things which brings us joy.

I used to drink a “Brownie” brand root beer 2 or 3 times a week.  But now, I haven’t had one in many, many months.

I used to get a great deal of enjoyment from building models.  But now, I haven’t built one in many, many years.

I used to get a great deal of satisfaction out of weight-lifting and physical fitness.  But now, well, some things are self-evident!

But friends, here is an absolute immutable: “. . . He knows. . . and He loves. . .”

For this I can be thankful.

Everything else in life can change, but Bonhoeffer found the never changing foundation.

Circumstances can change.

Provision can change.

Health can change.

Everything in life can change!

But there is one eternal and absolutely unchanging foundation: “. . . He knows. . . and He loves. . .”

We are easily tempted to look at our circumstances and allow them to be the thermometer of God’s love for us.

If things are good, He loves us.

If things are bad, He does not love us.

If things are good, He is pleased with us.

If things are bad, He is mad at us.

But friends, Jesus was declared by the Father to be “. . . my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” (Matt 3:17), and yet, He still suffered the indignity of crucifixion and the absolute hell of “forsaken” (Matt 27:46).

“I don’t think it is fair the way God allows me to be treated!!”  Well, “fair, schmair,” we were never promised “fair.”  We were promised His abiding presence (Hebrews 13:5) and His eternal nature of love (1 John 4:8), and for this we can truly be thankful.

Not every day will “YOU get a new car, and YOU get a new car, and YOU get a new car!!”

But every day and night of our lives we have the eternal, unchanging truth that, “. . . He knows. . . and He loves. . .”

For this, whether in Belen, the salt mines, a concentration camp, or hanging on the cross itself, we can be thankful because, “He knows! And He loves!!”

“Father, for this we say, thank you.”