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Earlier this month, George and Dottie Johnson, Erik Neilson and I spent a few days in Lexington, KY at the The International Conference On Missions. This annual gathering is the largest in our movement. There were just over 7,000 people present for the week. The conference allows opportunity to connect with partner churches, co-laborers in sharing the gospel and new relationships to help further the mission.
It is always a good reminder of the vastness of the Kingdom of God. A reminder of all that we have to be grateful for.
The holiday of Thanksgiving we will all celebrate this week is dedicated to the focus of being thankful. It’s typically based on warm, fuzzy feelings of all the good things our lives include. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word thankful as “pleased and relieved.” Both of those are great feelings. Everyone wants to be pleased and relieved, but these feelings can be evasive. That is the thing with feelings–– our circumstances often cause our feelings to fade. Maybe you experienced that this last year.
Gratitude on the other hand is quite different. Gratitude is spiritual work. It is a matter of the heart, but not merely a feeling. It is a word I have been reflecting on since spending time at ICOM conversing with others tackling the challenges of church planting.
One of my favorite authors is Henri Nouwen. And on this topic I have found few others that can articulate the gratitude I am praying for and working toward on this particular holiday. Both of the following quotes are from Nowen’s devotional, Bread For The Journey.
Gratitude is a Quality of the Heart— “Gratitude is the awareness that life in all its manifestations is a gift for which we want to give thanks. The closer we come to God in prayer, the more we become aware of the abundance of God’s gifts to us. We may even discover the presence of these gifts in the midst of our pains and sorrows. The mystery of the spiritual life is that many of the events, people, and situations that for a long time seemed to inhibit our way to God become ways of being united more deeply with him. What seemed a hindrance proves to be a gift. Thus gratitude becomes a quality of our hearts that allows us to live joyfully and peacefully even though our struggles continue.”
The Spiritual Work of Gratitude— “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives— the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections— that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”
May you experience tremendous gratitude on this Thanksgiving no matter the circumstances experienced this last year. I know the Salva Family will be pondering these truths in between the food and football. We are incredibly grateful for you. Thank your for journeying with us!
Toney Salva,
Executive Director
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