Thoughts from Culhwch

Thanksgiving. I think our souls cry out to give thanks. Our being is more constructed for giving thanks than we realize. We must give thanks, we must acknowledge the awesome power of God in our lives. But this kind of giving thanks allows us to really see what God’s gift is. If we fail to give thanks, and only consume or enjoy the things we have, we do not understand these things as gifts. We lose track of their meaning. We lose the sense of our being in and for something greater than ourselves. In giving thanks, we recognize not only our deep dependence on God, but also the relationship between ourselves and everything in our world is God’s making. Our reality is knit together with threads deeper than our reality, deeper than our sense of the world, or our slow understanding of God. When we give thanks, we recognize the structure which precedes structure itself. We recognize the Christ in whom all things subsist.

And so I give thanks. I thank God for salvation and the cross. For reaching down to me, for giving me life and freedom from sin. For re-working me into an instrument of righteousness, even if I often see myself as failing to live up to this. I thank God for good friends. For friends whom I can trust, who can help to bear my burdens. For friends who in whose company I taste the bread of heaven, in whose company I glimpse the Body of Christ. I thank God for friends who go out of their way for me. I thank God for a job and a house, for a family, for the beauty of His creation, for the blue sky, for snow, for joy, for peace, for all that makes this life not just bearable, but an image of the life to come. I thank God for the hope of things to come, for the blessings yet unknown, for the healing of the nations, and the peoples, and people. I thank God not just for moments of quiet, but for moments of distress when I glimpse the work of God saving me, saving others. I thank God for strength to live this life, to respond to His calling, to give myself to Him entirely. I thank God for moments when his power and grace shine like the sun, sing like crystal, and smile from the Father. I thank God when they remain hidden from my view, when they sing like bagpipes in the distant hills, and when God convicts me of my sin. I thank God for thankfulness.
As I thank God, I begin to release my own claims on myself an on others, I begin to worship God. To see in him that all things have their being, and that in me, I must leave all in God’s hands. And there, I being to feel His peace.