Thanksgiving is a day specially set aside to give thanks. We are told to be thankful for the many blessings we have received and to give thanks for the bounty provided us by a loving Deity. But there are many unblessings we live with as well: disease, conflict, violence, anger, sadness, loneliness, war and pestilence. There are many reasons not to be "thank full." Why not be thanks?
To be thanks acknowledges the suffering as well the joys of life. After all, we receive both in abundance. To be thanks is to tell the truth, especially to ourselves. I am not thankful that my van was destroyed in a freak car accident. I'm not thankful a friend stole my life savings. I'm not thankful for the infirmities of advancing age.
There are plenty of reasons to qualify my thanks. I am thanks for the Chinese buffet in Harrisonburg that provides lots of good food for a ridiculously low price. I'm not thankful because of the nagging feeling that someone is being denied a just living to give me an afternoon of glutinous pleasure. I am thanks for the freedom I have and the beautiful country I live in, knowing that most of the world's population is poor and living in squalor, and that many people suffered greatly to give me what I have. I am thanks for my health, my friends and family, my relative ease of living, but all of this could be gone in an instant. We have so much, yet we have so little.
On this day of gratitude, let's be thanks for what we have, acknowledge things are less than perfect, and resolve to do something about it.
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