Grateful in Strange Places

Soldiers will eat turkey in Turkey this week, and pumpkin pie in Iraq. Men and women wearing bullet-proof vests will take off their helmets, bow their heads, and thank the Lord for their families back home.

A missionary in a remote village will remember what it was like to wake up to the sound of the Macy's parade and the Detroit Lions football game on TV with the smell of homemade bread wafting from the oven.

Hospital patients will eat their Thanksgiving dinner from a bed tray.

A college student in a nearly deserted dormitory will order a pizza, watch a movie, and try to finish a research paper that's due December 1.

In a building filled with apartment-dwellers, yet strangely alone, a young urban professional will pull a frozen dinner from the microwave oven and settle onto the couch with a book she's been wanting to read.

An aging couple in an assisted living center will remember what it was like when all the aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered for Thanksgiving on Grandpa's farm.

As a cold November wind whips through the cemetery, a widow will visit her husband's grave.

Whispers of Gratitude

Sometimes it's hard to feel thankful, but even then, it's possible to give thanks. Christians can "give thanks . . . in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18), so gratitude is a spiritual discipline—more an act of the will than a feeling. After all, the Bible tells about some strange places where people gave thanks.

From the slimy confines of a whale's belly, Jonah told the Lord, "I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you" (Jonah 2:9).

On the eve of his crucifixion, "Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it . . . . Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them" (Matthew 26:26, 27).

In the midst of a storm at sea that pounded their ship for 14 straight days, the apostle Paul promised the sailors and other passengers that all 276 of the ship's occupants would survive. "After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves" (Acts 27:35, 36).

In unlikely places this week—places of suffering and danger, places of loneliness and depression, even places of hunger and poverty—there will rise up to God what Thomas Gray called "the still small voice of gratitude." Believers will give thanks because, whatever the circumstances, they will never be separated from the love of God. Lewis Smedes said that life "can be all right at the center even when it's all wrong on the edges. For at the center where life is open to the Creator and Savior God, we are held, led, loved, cared for, and inseparably bound into the future that he has for every child he claims as his."

That's good to remember—especially when we find ourselves in some strange places of our own.