Clergy Corner: Be thankful and celebrate

November is the month for being thankful – whether we like it or not. As you look back at 2009, do you find it easy to be thankful?

Did you lose your job this year? Were your hours or salary reduced? Did you lose your house? Did your health fail? Did you send a son or daughter to Iraq or Afghanistan? Did you lose a loved one? Maybe it’s a safe bet that 2009 wasn’t the best year of your life. Our country is in a recession. Our country is at war.

Jonathan Bauer

But of course, November is the month for being thankful – whether we like it or not. In spite of the challenges, in all likelihood there are still blessings to celebrate. A job is still a job, even if it does not pay as well as the one you had in 2008. A roof over your head is still a roof over your head, even if it isn’t as nice as the one over your head in 2008. And life is still life, even if it isn’t as healthy as it was in 2008. Even in the most difficult of times, there are things for which to be thankful.

But come November 26th, try something. Be thankful. But not in spite of the challenges. Instead, be thankful because of them. Be thankful for them.

Really? Be thankful for the recession? Be thankful for war? Be thankful for illness, injury, even death?

Certainly none of those things is pleasant. Certainly none of those things was a part of God’s plan for mankind. But consider the good that comes when God allows them to happen.

After 2009, would any of you want to live on this planet forever? After 2009, do any of you think that this world can turn itself around and that life can be exactly as we would like it to be all of the time? After 2009, do any of you think that mankind (you and me included) is not to blame for the problems and pain in this world?

Challenges have a unique way of making us aware of the gaping hole that exists in our lives. The gaping hole that can not be filled by possessions, power, or pleasure. The gaping hole that can only be filled by something more, something bigger and something beyond what this world has to offer or, more accurately, by someone.

The only piece that completes this puzzle is Jesus. In him we find a God who loves us so much that he became one of us. He took every greedy, hateful, perverse thing that a human being ever did and he took the punishment for it with his death on the cross. In him, everything that was now wrong is now right.

So this November, we can be thankful for him. And we can be thankful for the challenges that constantly remind us how much we need him.

Jonathan Bauer is pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Tempe.