“Stewarding the Night.” Advent Week #4: Gratitude…
…it shows up in the dark wood.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not [and will not]overcome it.”
John 1:5
“But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.”
Malachi 4:2
Eugene Peterson has a prayer he prayed before writing…
“Dear God, I want to be a writer to your glory—I want to shape sentences and words out of my soul, not just my mind... Fresh, alive, prayerful sentences. So The Message is true. I offer myself as [a] servant to this text—and accept the ascetic appropriate to it. Please, dear Lord, help me to be moderate and submissive to your yoke.”
This is my prayer. I have shed tears over this reflection; it took everything out of me, my friends. My longing to communicate the truth of who God is, his light in darkness, his heart…this is daunting. Sometimes I have great fear that my words won’t care for people the way I long for. I wanted to skip this week, but here I am, giving you what I wrestled to write…
…there is so much suffering, it is tempting to think evil is winning.
A number of years ago, I taught Bible to seniors and sophomores at a private Christian School in Charlotte, NC. One of my goals was to create a classroom where questions and doubts were invited. In order to create this kind of atmosphere I designated every Friday as "Discussion Day." I gave them time to think, and then hands shot up. We would process and discuss their questions for the entire hour. It was never flat, they were never checked out. There was energy in that room every single Friday. It was good for me to receive these questions. Most of them were practical and honest. They had been carrying them around and had no place to release them. Come Friday, they unlocked the latch. They landed like a pile of tangled rope on my lap. One by one we pulled them apart.
"Should we get into a serious relationship in high school?"
"What do we do if we don't want to be disrespectful but we know our parents are wrong about something they are accusing us of?"
"Is it wrong to want to make a lot of money?"
"If someone takes their life, do they go to hell?"
“How do we know we are saved?”
“What do we do when we find out someone betrayed us?
“What if we don’t respect our parents?”
“Did Jesus know everything when he was a kid?”
One question came up every single year.
"Why would God create the earth first and not just create heaven and be done with it? If he wants us all to be together in heaven and for the world to be good, why wouldn't he do that at that start? He's God."
Wow, good question. Why in the world would this be the plan? These kids had me thinking; their questions forced me to engage with God and invited me to put to trial what I said I believed. They didn't tiptoe, they let the raw questions come. For me, diving into this particular question changed me.
Between the living, the longing, and the studying…
…I don’t know. I don’t like how things are rolling out. From my perspective, he should have called Creation into existence, put us in the Garden to be with him, each other, and all the creatures—getting along, stewarding well, joyful and whole. No sorrow, no tears, no heartbreak, no cancer, no death, no anxiety and depression, no emptiness and loneliness, no abuse, no ALS or Parkinson’s, no misplaced affection, no oversexualized society or underdeveloped maturity, no greed, no power-hungry juggernauts, no selfishness, no lying, no hate or disregard, no racism masked as “law and order,” my word, the list can stretch to Saturn and back…
So, I agree…it is confusing.
And the longer I live, and the more stories I hear of friends suffering…We need his presence more than anything else.
God must understand something about joy that we don’t know.
Subterranean Gratitude.
My curiosity took me back to the themes…Resurrection, Restoration, and Redemption. Everything he made is, at the core, good. God didn’t rejoice over Creation only for it fall off the rails and everything thrown to hell. He didn’t lose control and execute Plan B. He knows something. We go beyond acknowledging Jesus’s birth, we celebrate it, because he came to heal every last heartache, even the ones we ourselves have caused.
This reflection is about gratitude. And gratitude feels very much like it is in conflict with the darkness. How can they co-exist? Because to be honest, I am not at all grateful for affliction. I hate it. And somehow, the way of God, the strength, creativity, and love of God will never allow oppression to hijack his story, his “God called it Good,” stamp over everything he made.
Gratitude comes unexpectedly. We can't generate it ourselves. That's not to say we don't teach our kids to say "thank you." Entitlement comes far more naturally than thanksgiving. But deep, sincere gratitude is costly. It seems to work in tandem with the not-so-great things. Almost always, gratitude partners with something we are not grateful for, something missing, something like emptiness, loss, or exhausting overload.
As the birds have taught me…sit still, listen, and notice…be attuned, God is near.
The challenges in our lives ready us to receive goodness out of nowhere. We are desperate. The very need for hope creates fertile soil; we become open to small gifts, help, and support by such ordinary means. I have learned a secret: I can hate the suffering and yet find joy in the midst of it. The deposits of heaven are all around.
When all is well, we rarely notice such things.
Lord, give me eyes and ears…
Romans 8 is one of the most helpful passages in Scripture on suffering. We must not sidestep or minimize the anguish of it. But Paul appropriately names the assurance.
“For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.”
We, along with Creation, cry out to be released. The hope is in the liberation. This glory is a resurrection glory, a restoration thing. Sorrow, illness, fear, death…an environment damaged by our hands, insatiable hunger… We long to know the safe and gritty love of God, overcoming love. We ache to be made new, to be liberated. And when we actually taste it in the midst of the “now and not yet,” when the light comes in, when redemption reshapes the story, worship and gratitude swells. In those moments—we feel something completely miraculous, the expanding of gratitude when it makes so logical sense.
So, back to my students and their question—I gave them an analogy:
“If you came to class today thirsty and asked me for a bottle of water and I gave it to you, you would appreciate it. But if a young man from the Sudan who had run for his life across miles of desert, under blazing sun in the oppressive heat was given a bottle of water, his gratitude and thanksgiving would be off the charts.”
They got it.
Gratitude that springs up like a fountain full and ongoing, rises out of dry ground. Wasteland.
When something beautiful forms out of ashes it silences us; it moves us to tears. This is no small thing: it is a miracle of God.
Glory overcoming evil and suffering—
A Hero.
Let me share another example:
My husband and I started a tradition last year by going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to kick off Christmas break. We went again last night, wind howling, Christmas lights making the city festive with energy. But once we got in from the wind that cut through us, we slowed down; we got present.
There are certain artists or particular pieces that force me to stop and linger. They are just so good. It’s not just the skill in taking globs of paint and by that painting a picture with a realistic look, but the ability to capture an emotion or a moment in history in such a way we feel connected, as if we are there. One such painting did that for me last night: The Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner depicting Mary accepting her role as the mother of Jesus announced by the Angel Gabriel—
Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner. 1898
It’s one thing to see this level of talent, but it is another to witness talent like this from someone who has no use of their hand and little use of their arms.
Joni Eareckson Tada is one of my heroes. Her story is this kind of story.
Some of you are familiar with Joni. If you aren’t, search for her videos, articles, and books; read her story. If you are going to hang around the internet, she would be a worthwhile reason to. HERE is a piece she wrote for Advent this year.
Joni took a dive in shallow water in the Chesapeake when she was 16 years old. She broke her neck and from that point on has lived her life in a wheelchair, suffering with quadriplegia. Joni is well known for her speaking and writing, she is especially known for her broad impact helping disabled people live full lives even as they endure great physical limitations.
She is a deliverer of hope.
But what some don’t know about her is that she is an artist.
Joni endures physical pain ongoing. She has battled breast cancer twice, and breathing can be arduous. So, laboring over a painting from her wheelchair with a paintbrush in her mouth speaks to a level of glory revealed in juxtaposition.
Light in darkness. Beauty out of ashes.
“It took a long time to execute this painting; with a brush between my teeth, I dabbed row after row after row after row of pastel tones: coral, pink paint; turquoise, dark blue, all moving and swirling to convey a sky that was alive and even electric with anticipation. An active night sky concealing an angelic host that was just ready to burst through the color with their heaven-shaking announcement.”
What strikes me about Joni is her raw honesty. She doesn’t pretend. You won’t hear her say, “My pain doesn’t matter because God is good.” Instead, she names it for what it is, cries over it, battles depression from the weariness of it, and calls her friends to help her when the darkness feels overwhelming. And yet, Joni takes delight in the smell of coffee wafting to her bedroom from the kitchen each morning. Her spirit is lifted by a simple hymn. She speaks often of everyday moments as a source of joy. Her gratitude is forefront every time you hear her talk. Not by ignoring pain or stuffing it, but by noticing and naming the light breaking into it.
Unable to use her hands, Joni paints with a paintbrush in her teeth.
Because of Joni, I believe God will come, somehow, some way.
“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness...”
After years of reflecting on that question from my students long ago, I have been weighing the idea that we are eternal beings. Who Dawn is, all my experiences, what and who has shaped me, the long living I have known, is not going to erase when I am with Jesus. We won’t be disconnected from this part of our eternal life; I won’t be unrecognizable to myself, and I won’t be unrecognizable to those who know me. I am certain that Joni and I will both experience freedom and healing that we cannot imagine when Jesus returns; however, I am also certain that Joni will feel a greater fullness than I will over anything having to do with her feet, legs, hands, arms, and back. The contrast she will encounter between this world and the one to come will be cosmic. And the contrast matters. What we are carrying around in our lives now—the heavy things that bend us over—directly impact the expansiveness and depth of freedom we will one day know. And our rejoicing will be particular.
I wonder, and I am honest when I say, “I don’t know much of anything…” But maybe the exhaustiveness of the glory of God is revealed by its opposite. Does light unveil its comprehensiveness when it overcomes darkness? Is joy known at its depth when it springs up out of suffering? Is community and belonging meaningful if we don’t endure times of loneliness? Continual laughter from videos on Instagram is simply not the same as laughter following weeks of tears. One is forgotten and fleeting and one is medicine and hope. After being single for 46 years, my wedding had an element to it that was mysterious and altogether different from the wedding of a 23-year-old couple. One is not wrong or right, better or worse, but it is true—my waiting set up a wedding celebration that would far exceeded anything the Instagram culture tries desperately to capture. A positive pregnancy test after years of infertility stirs up a different kind of gratitude than those who have never had to wait and wonder. It is just a reality. One is not better, rather forged for by waiting and fear. The supernatural becomes unmistakable. God, alone gets the glory.
Christmas this year after coming within an inch of losing my mom has a joy to it that is new and unexplainable…
But there is an essential thing, here. In a world that attempts to turns us into machines, we must fight for our humanness. We feel despair,and wonder if our pain will ever heal. Every one of us feels terror, the shadow of death, the sleepless nights from grief, the sorrow from loss that makes it hard to breathe, the isolation that makes us lonely and insecure, the ongoing aimlessness in our careers, broken bodies and physical pain…God is a God of compassion and empathy. He is not callous or cold. And he certainly does not expect us to have a robotic response to the terrors that fly by night. The Psalmists remind us to take these emotions straight to God. Because what I am sure of is this: gratitude doesn’t come from pretending.
So when you worship, when you give thanks, when thankfulness comes out of nowhere at the least and unlikely thing, for sure, your tears will be there, too.
To all who mourn in Israel,
he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
that the Lord has planted for his own glory (Isaiah 61:3)
Many movements of God happen at night. We love the image of the shepherds “keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Out of nowhere the glorious and arresting appearance of the heavenly host. It’s a sweet reminder that God is our true and faithful shepherd. He, too, is keeping watch, my friends. Keeping watch over his flock at night—
“No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.”
“His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring,
with plants springing up everywhere.”
