Speakes: Don’t you just love the holidays?
Published 10:36 am Friday, November 29, 2019
It’s that time of year when friends and family should be able to get together for an enjoyable time, expressing gratitude and sharing gifts.
However, this time of year can produce emotions that have adverse effects.
If you wish the days of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s would hurry and be over, I can only imagine you are going through one of the many items that tend to sideline us all.
I would suggest trying to get involved in some activity, where we are giving rather than just coping during these times.
Inactivity breeds contempt.
If we allow ourselves to become more and more isolated mentally, physically and emotionally, we could be in for a long winter of sadness, loneliness and regrets.
Sometimes we tend to be perfectionists, and after a while, we can become dissatisfied with what we have or how events are turning out in our lives.
We can easily be “glass-half-empty” kind of people if we’re not careful.
The Apostle Paul wrote this to the church in Thessalonica: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) The tricky part of that verse is not “give thanks.” Anybody with a shred of decency knows how to say, “Thank you.”
The difficulty of 1 Thessalonians 5:18 is the “all circumstances” part. Give thanks in all circumstances — that’s a different story altogether.
However, I think we often struggle to be thankful because of unrealistic expectations.
For some reason, we’ve bought into this entitlement attitude that says I deserve to be happy. I deserve to have things go my way.
We feel we have a certain future coming to us, and when it doesn’t materialize, we lose our contentment.
Another enemy of a grateful heart could be a negative attitude. Some see the bad in every situation.
Rather than focusing on the hundreds of blessings we do have, there are gripes and complaints about the things we don’t have.
Envy makes it hard, too. Sometimes gratitude is hard because of our comparisons with others.
We want what they’ve got. It’s easy to be thankful when your team wins the ballgame, but what happens when the other team wins? Everybody can’t leave the stadium on top.
Or a farmer prays for rain while a vacationer prays for the sun — somebody’s going to be disappointed.
Let’s face it, it’s hard to be grateful when good things happen to others, but not to us, and sometimes the stakes are pretty high.
That’s when gratitude gets so tricky.
It’s common to come home feeling guilty we live while so many others don’t. How are you supposed to feel when you lived through something, but someone else didn’t?
It’s not that we’re ungrateful, it’s just hard to sort out all the conflicting emotions.
The reality is, it is one thing to be thankful for the blessings in our life, and it is another thing to be grateful when things are tough or for someone else instead of us.
But friends here’s the deal: Despite those challenges, Paul still said, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Over in Philippians, he said, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I’ll say it again, Rejoice!”
What makes us sit up and take notice of how Paul is instructing us, is something we might miss if we are not careful.
Paul wrote 1st Thessalonians while in Corinth, during a brief time of peace between attacks by the Jews who opposed him. Yet, he wrote Philippians while in chains under house arrest in Rome.
Paul endured a tremendous amount of abuse for the gospel. He had been opposed, threatened, beaten, attacked on numerous occasions, once stoned and left for dead. His travels had taken him through all kinds of hostile places.
Yet listen to what he wrote to the church in Philippi while in prison: “I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:10-13)Holidays, don’t you love them? We definitely can!
Here’s hoping your time of Thanksgiving this year was just that, and this Christmas will reflect the same.
Kenny Speakes is the pastor of Mt. Zion Christian Chuch at 3631 Combs Ferry Road. Contact him at kws0077@yahoo.com.