The Edges of Gratitude
And these are but the outer fringe of God’s works;
how faint the whisper we hear of God!
Job 26:14
Honest gratitude is difficult even for the best of us. Routine gratitude can be easier. Like a child’s bedtime prayers, we can rattle off all those things we’re supposed to be grateful for: food, water, shelter, friends, family, etc. If we’re feeling particularly spiritual, we can toss in a “thank you” for Jesus and call it a day.
Perhaps we need routine to carry us through this very not-routine year. A perfunctory “thanks” is better than none at all, right? I’ve been encouraging people all year to lower their expectations, do what they can. We are in, to use a phrase we are all sick of, unprecedented times. If all you can muster this year for a moment of Thanksgiving gratitude is gratefulness that 2020 is almost over, you won’t be alone.
Our spiritual lives have certainly taken a hit this year. The things that can so often sustain us--singing together, sharing in-person communion, hugs, sanctuaries--are not safe options. And so, for many of us, God can seem distant. God becomes just one more item on a list of things we’re supposed to be grateful for.
I’m here to tell you that when things just feel always a little out of reach, when things don’t seem to be quite right, when you keep grasping for what could be--this is a profoundly spiritual place to be. We can so often confuse the heights of spiritual satisfaction with security and absolutism. It’s like assuming God only belongs in established church buildings and sanctuaries at specific times. But there is a long tradition of finding God and knowing God not in the certain and absolute, but in the fleeting and unobtainable. If this year has put you off balance, you might be exactly ready to notice the Spirit’s grace in your life.
Long before the orderly letters of Paul and even the kindly teachings of Jesus, there was the story of Job. Job is an odd book, with little to offer in terms of neat and tidy endings. It’s about suffering and friendship and the completely overwhelming nature of God. The verse I want you to remember today comes from the middle of a speech Job has given about all of these wild and magnificent characteristics of God. Job says to his friends, “And these are but the outer fringes of God’s works; how faint the whisper we hear of God!”
In this, we hear what is at least one of my truest beliefs about God. We can only hear but a whisper, catch an edge of understanding. We recognize this when we size ourselves up against the vastness of the world and the limits of our understanding. As much as we might think we have progressed or learned since the time the story of Job was collected hundreds of years before Christ, we are still small, finite, frail creatures. When we even begin to look at who or what or how God is, we might still find ourselves saying, “And these are but the outer fringes of God’s works; how faint the whisper we hear of God!”
It’s not a dissimilar spiritual posture to what we find in another wisdom book of the bible, Ecclesiastes. This is the book of the bible that says things like, “When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth—people getting no sleep day or night— then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
We might fool ourselves into thinking this is not so when the world seems orderly and structured and safe. Our thanksgiving can reflect that, when we offer gratitude for the staying put in the way that it should be. It’s a prayer that says, “Thank you God for staying put and being nice and taking care of me.” This isn’t such a bad prayer. But now, in this time of upheaval, our prayers of thanksgiving must adjust to instead praise the God of Job, the God we can barely understand. This is the God we see out of the corner of our eye, that we momentarily sense in a moment of joy. And then like a whisper, it floats off again.
For the God who emerges with power and majesty and mystery out of times of chaos and destabilization--we give thanks.
John Steinbeck describes this spiritual moment in this way in his book East of Eden:
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes.
See if your thanksgiving prayers might expand this year. You might have to clear some space ahead of time to listen to the whispers of God, to catch sight of those things that for just a moment are bright and radiant. If what we hear of God is but a whisper, we’d better lean in to listen closely.
Give thanks for food, water, shelter, friends, family but also:
The warmth of a new pair of socks on a cold November morning.
A text from a friend, a brief moment of remembering one another and being loved, and the magic of instantaneous connection.
Musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra recording straight from their living rooms.
The chance to hit the snooze button and trust in the gentle workings of your own body.
The smell of coffee.
The miracle of toothpaste.
Frozen chicken tenders.
And there are the prayers that go beyond even this, that I don’t have words for. The gratitude for brief moments of glory and light and hopefulness. It’s the miracle of being alive right now, the unlikely circumstances of now, the gift of each breath, each connection, each moment.
What happens when you can’t give thanks for the family seated around your table? What happens when you can’t give thanks for good health? What happens when you can’t give thanks for safety and security.
In those moments, turn toward the wildness of God, a God beyond our comprehension. Give thanks for those moments on the edges, the glimpses of grace. Your prayers might not be routine this year, but I hope they’re honest.