"It's Your Choice"         Thanksgiving, 2006         Philippians 4:4 13

This week we celebrate the national holiday of Thanksgiving that I’d like to talk about this morning. We have this image of the happy family all gathered around a huge table all happy to be together. A kind of celebration of family happiness and togetherness. Unfortunately, for many families it doesn’t work out that way.

My daughter, Traci and my son-in law have a video rental business. She told me that the day after Thanksgiving is one of their busiest days of the year. They live in Mountain View, a town of about 2,000 people and know many their customers on a first name basis. She said the day before and day after Thanksgiving, many people come and to rent videos. Why is that, I asked?

She said that many of the families have had enough and need to retreat to their television sets to watch a movie. I suppose she has a point. It’s hard to face difficult situations and personal differences in many families. Thanksgiving in many families has fallen on hard times. It’s too bad, because being thankful and having gratitude for all our blessings would go a long way to reconciling people. It might even lead us to give thanks for negative and difficult family situations, and count them as blessings.

Forgiveness leads down the path to giving thanks to God, and Thanksgiving. We always will have some difficult situations and relationships in life. We all have to choose what issues we will maximize and what we will reduce, and the person who has learned to choose gratitude for the positive in the midst of the negative is far better equipped to cope with whatever comes, and to make the best of things in the worst of times.

The apostle Paul is a great example. Paul had a choice to make. He was in prison for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was telling people that the cross of Christ was the way God claimed power over sin and evil. While that was good news for those who believed him, most thought it was foolishness, especially those in power. How could a man who was executed claim to be the Lord of all? They arrested him for treason against Rome.

Paul could have chosen to be bitter, focusing on the negative all those friends and family who did him wrong. But instead he chose to focus on the positive, on all that was right, on all he still had. His letter to the Philippians is written as much to himself as it was to them. He wrote: "Rejoice in the Lord Always." He had every reason to complain and plead with God about his dire circumstances, but instead he wrote:

"...with THANKSGIVING let your requests be known to God." He had every reason to look on the dark side of his circumstance, but instead he wrote: "...whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable . . . if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." He had every reason to give up, but instead he wrote: "I press on . . . I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Yes, he was writing to himself as much as he was to others.

You see, we have only partial control in WHAT happens to us, but we have full control to choose HOW WE WILL RESPOND to what happens. When we see all things as Gods blessing, the good things as well as the challenges we face, we can choose to be thankful. This is the choice Paul made.

It was also the choice the first Pilgrims had to make that first winter. The Pilgrims came from England to Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1617 out of a deep conviction that they could be a community of what they considered the true faith. They hoped to establish an ideal society that would change the whole world. But that first year and more, they faced enormous and deadly difficulties.

When they arrived, the weather was colder than they had in England. The work was hard; the food supply was inadequate. We are told that at one time there were only five grains of corn per person per meal. It was called the "starving time," with sickness and death all around them. Almost half the colony died during that first winter.

Many of the Pilgrims were demoralized and dejected. They could have given up, and returned to England. But they chose to focus on making the most of what they still had, rather than on all they had lost. They concentrated on the positives rather than the negatives, and that made all the difference.

They worked long and hard on their farms during the Spring and Summer of that first year, the Pilgrims experienced a bountiful harvest with plenty of food. And once more, they had a choice to make. They could have said, "we've worked hard for it, and we deserve it." But they chose to give thanks to God, and to be reconciled together even with the natives, the Indians.

Today the Pilgrim’s legacy is called today the Puritan work ethic, or even the American work ethic. This is the fundamental belief that success will come to those who work hard. The rewards you receive in life, we tell our children, will be commensurate with the effort and work you put into it. We respect and envy those who have reached the top as because of their talent and hard work.

A few years ago someone interviewed corporate managers regarding their own understanding of the reasons for their success in business. You would think they would have reflected the old Puritan Work Ethic about how hard work and long hours have led to their success. But, surprisingly, they didn't. Instead, they had the candor to confess that much of their success could be explained only by what they called, "sheer luck." They just happened to be at the right place at the right time and knew the right people and made a lucky decision.

I have reached another conclusion. For when we push the question back far enough, I believe that whatever good fortune and success and good health we have enjoyed is not something we deserve or have earned, but a GIFT, a gift of God's grace. In all of life’s success and failures, I am convinced that all that happens is a blessing from God.

I know of nowhere this fundamental conviction of life as a gift of God's undeserved grace is more movingly expressed than in the personal diary of a young man where he shares his thought late one night in a hospital room, sitting beside the bed of his young wife who is critically ill, worrying, waiting, wondering. I am sure that all of us would be tempted to choose bitterness or resentment or despair in that painful situation.

But listen to what he wrote sitting there beside her bed in that dimly lit room, listen to the choice he made: "She may die before morning. But I have been with her for four years. Four years. There is no way I could feel cheated if I did not have her for another day. I never deserved her for a single moment. God knows that.”

He wrote, “In the end, we must all accept the justice of death and the injustice of life. I've lived a good life, longer than many, better than most. I’ve lived 32 years. I could not ask for another day. What did I do to deserve birth? It was purely gift. And I am me, and that is a miracle. I have no right to a single moment. Some are given a single hour, yet I have had 32 years. Few can choose when they will die. I choose to accept death now. As of this moment, I give up my right to life. I give up my right to her life too.

But wait! It's morning! I am being given another day. Another day to live and read and smell and walk in glory. I am alive for another day. And she is alive. It's a gift! Another gift! Thanks be to God!"

No one knows why some are blessed to be wealthy and healthy, and others to be poor and sick. I do not know why the gift of life is not given equally to all. But I know that when Jesus went to his cross, God became poor and sick and died so that all people would see the glory of the resurrection. God wants all people to join him at the celebration which is Thanksgiving.

So we come to the great thanksgiving, Holy Communion where Jesus forgives our sins, and gives us a new life in his resurrection. No matter what we happens, even when we are like Paul sick and in prison, Jesus is inviting us into his body and his resurrection. He asks that we express our gratitude, in helping to give the gift of life in all its fullness to others. That’s how we live in thanksgiving every day for all the days of our life.

Amen