What are you grateful for, as you begin the New Year?
It occurs to me that this may be as important a question for our community, our commonwealth and our nation as any as the year 2020 unfolds. Because gratitude and thankfulness gives us a different perspective. Often when things are “right,” we’re grateful. When someone “does right by you,” you tend to be grateful. When one is surprised by a kindness offered, or something unexpected given, it is easy to be grateful. When things are “wrong,” often gratitude and thankfulness go away. If my perception is that you’ve “done me wrong,” or that “you’re wrong” in what you think or believe, it’s about impossible to be grateful. It seems over the last few years, we’ve come to a place where it’s become very important to determine “right” and “wrong.” A look at the editorial and letters section of this very paper over the last year — and as this year begins — is filled with people determined to be right, and at the same time to declare others as wrong. Labels are given. Lines have been drawn, and quickly. There was a phrase I grew up with that one doesn’t hear nearly as often anymore in our current public discourse — “let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.” It was space allowed for disagreement, and at the same time allowed for space for something to happen, because there was some level of trust that the common good was on everyone’s mind. A well-worn story is told of House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who was Democratic speaker of the house for 10 years, and Republican President Ronald Reagan. As you would expect there were some significant disagreements between the two, some of them sharp. And yet, they were also friends; after a day of political battle, they would go out for dinner. When President Reagan was shot, Speaker O’Neill prayed at his bedside. These political “enemies,” on some level, were grateful for one another. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus preaches on a level place and says this: But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. (Luke 6:35). Curious isn’t it, that the word “enemy” and the world “ungrateful” are connected. And yet God’s kindness to the ungrateful is clear, as is our call to be kind — a sort of gratitude — for those who we even fundamentally disagree with; our “enemy.” This election year 2020 is a year where there will be much to disagree about. There will be a lot of claims of being right, and that others are wrong. It will go further than mere “right” and “wrong;” there will be attempts to hurt “the other side” with words and phrases and descriptions designed for just that purpose, to inflame, to put someone in one’s place, to stick the knife in, to put a cloud of suspicion and untruth on the words and actions of the “enemy.” In the midst of this is our task to be grateful, even thankful, maybe even offering the “benefit of the doubt.” Some friends of mine went on a bike trip in 2019, traveling the backroads of Southwest Virginia, in the New River Valley. One of the riders had a puncture in the inner tube of his front tire. Soon the group of eight or so riders had stopped as he was fixing his tire by the side of the road. Suddenly one of the riders whispered to the group gathered to look at a sign in the yard of the house of which they had stopped in front. The sign had a target on it, with a bullet hole near the bulls eye, and a large arrow pointing to it. The arrow curved down the sign copy, where there was a picture of an AR-15 assault rife with the words, “You are here,” and a statement to the effect of the gun being loaded and pointed in the direction of those reading the sign. Then came a voice from the yard of the house in the direction of these bicycle short-ed and helmeted collection of guys with their loaded touring bikes... “Hey!... Are y’all alright? Do you need to use a phone? Would you like some cold water?” Gratitude was the response of the group, beyond “I’m glad they didn’t shoot me,” to gratitude for “someone doing right by them,” which is another way of saying “love offered to the neighbor.” Which if you think of the stories Jesus tells of “the neighbor,” is always someone who looks or believes differently than you or I do. The “enemy.” In this year there may be many ways that neighbors, or church members or people writing in this newspaper will disagree about what is right and what is wrong. It is easy in those times to be ungrateful. On guard. When that happens, remember this verse (Colossians 3:15): Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called in the one body. And be thankful. It opens you and me to a very different way of moving forward on the road we’re on.
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AuthorPastor Paul came to Grace to serve as our Pastor in October 2012. After a first career in product and graphic design, he was ordained in 1993, and has served as a parish pastor in Virginia and South Carolina. He is married to Jill and they have two daughters, one at Roanoke College and one at James Madison University. Archives
December 2021
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