Brown's Daily Word: Brown's Daily Word 11-16-11

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Brown's Daily Word 11-16-11

Good morning,

Praise the Lord for this Wednesday. We are just a week away from Thanksgiving Eve. The Lord blessed us with a very mild and winsome day yesterday. I was walking around the church grounds yesterday looking at the Forsythia bush that was planted by dear brother Ed Hower, which is currently in bloom. We have fresh flowers in November. In Orissa , India the roses are in full bloom, along with the Poinsettias, which bloom profusely during Christmas season. You will see the Poinsettias in bloom by the hedges and byways, welcoming the NEWBORN King.

We will gather for our Midweek service this evening at 6 PM with a full meal. followed by Bible Study and choir practice.

These devotions are posted on my home page: Brownnaik.blogspot.com and also on my face Book page.

As I pause and ponder anew about Thanksgiving I confess that sometimes I grumble. I ask the Lord for His Forgiveness. Grumbling is forgetfulness. Maya Angelou, African-American poet, tells of whiners who would come into her grandmother's store in Arkansas. Grandma would always quietly beckon Maya to come closer. Then she would bait the customer with "How are you doing today, Brother Thomas?" As the complaining gushed forth, she would nod or make eye contact with her granddaughter to make sure Maya heard what was being said. As soon as the whiner left, her grandmother would ask Maya to stand in front of her. Then she would say the same thing she had said at least a thousand times: "Sister, did you hear what Brother So-and-So or Sister-Much-to-Do complained about? You heard that!" Maya would nod.

Grandma would continue, "Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake up again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not .... And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or 10 minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister" said Grandma.

Grandma would conclude: "What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain."

Paul said, "Do all things without murmuring ["complaining" in some translations]", using the same word found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word found in the story of grumbling Hebrews. It's a word which sound like what it means—gongusmos. Like our English word "murmur", it sounds like grumbling? "Do all things without murmuring," for grumbling is forgetting. That goes not only for our relationship with God but also for our relationships with one another. Often, when I murmur about people close to me, it is because I forget the good things in their lives and in our relationship.

God still graciously satisfies our hunger. God still graciously feeds us with the Bread of Life, Jesus Himself. Grace is something completely unearned and unmerited. Thanksgiving is acknowledging that someone has given us what was not our due. Thanksgiving is recognizing we have been given something not owed us.

Americans are big on entitlement. We presuppose that God owes us something or that God is in our debt although, in reality God's goodness is never earned. If it were earned, it would be barter not blessing. In fact, sometimes God surprises us in that when we least deserve it, God pours out gracious blessings on us. An entitlement mentality seldom leads to thanksgiving. When we think we've got it coming to us, what is there to be thankful for? (So, according to that line of thinking, why not grumble when we don't receive what we think we deserve?)

Thankfulness," veteran preacher Warren Wiersbe once observed, "is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, ‘I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy.' But the mature Christian realizes that life is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from God's bountiful hand."

Thanksgiving is the response to grace. Thanksgiving humbly acknowledges, "God, how good You are to me!" Thanksgiving is responding to God's grace even in the midst of trouble. "In everything," Paul wrote, "give thanks." Not necessarily for everything, but in every situation, give thanks for who God is.

Thanksgiving is a response to grace. There are times when it is easy to forget that life itself is a gift of God's grace. There are times when we forget what God has done in Jesus.

Avery Brooke offers this straightforward prayer: "I have many things to be thankful for, God. Sometimes I remember them and other times I forget. When something large or small goes wrong, it fills my mind and I forget those things for which—when I remember—I am thankful. Help me to remember the good things, God. To name them, to savor them, and to be thankful to you. Amen" (Avery Brooke, Plain Prayer for a Complicated World).