by Rola Al Ashkar and Veronica Gould

Rola:

The words of this Psalm show a transition from exile to return, from desertion to restoration. The language of going with tears and coming back with joy is, in fact, literal. So this is a Psalm of thankfulness for relief after suffering. And what is a better circumstance for one to rejoice and express gratitude?

However, the question that I asked myself is: does it make human sense to be thankful in the midst of suffering? I remember that this time of the year last year was the hardest in my life. Now that I look back, I have a lot to be thankful for, but if you had asked me at the time, I would have named all the reasons for me not to be thankful. Simply, my feelings of grief, loss and brokenness were so overwhelming that thankfulness is the last emotion that would have occurred to me.

Likewise, as I think of people undergoing various experiences of suffering, whether be it wildfires, hurricanes, difficult political times or wars, I cannot but think that a lot of the people today do not have a reason to be thankful, or if they had, that isn’t their overwhelming feeling right now. At the end, we are human, our thoughts and feelings fluctuate, and authenticity in our relationship to God is crucial.

The Psalmist also says elsewhere: “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” and with him I ask again: When you are grieving what does it mean to be thankful?

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Veronica:

Being thankful in the midst of grief is that brief respite from struggle. It’s the part of us that dares to hope, and the bold faith that we will yet see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Thankfulness is a response of our hearts, both for the things we have and know and have and experience, and to the source of all good things, our Creator. Thanksgiving is an offering. It is the process of acknowledging God’s hand in providing all that is good, overcoming all that is evil, healing all that is broken, and restoring all that is lost, in time.

Our gratitude can be complex. On 9/11, I was an eight-year-old girl with a father who took the train every day into the city where he worked just a few blocks from the World Trade Center building. As a child, I had gone to daycare there. Sometimes my dad had meetings there. That morning in particular, he was supposed to go to a meeting, but it had been postponed. By all accounts, my dad should have been in the building when the planes hit. But he wasn’t.

In the midst of national grief and so much suffering, there was also this, the deep gratitude of an eight-year-old girl whose father lived. And the guilt that comes with this kind of gratitude. How can I give thanks to God for saving my father when someone else’s father didn’t get to see another day?

Then there’s the fires. A death toll still being counted. A fresh, open wound in a community so close to home. I read a story about a cat. One small survivor of the wreckage reunited with its owners. The owners who were still looking for their two other cats, cats which may or may not be found when the smoke clears.

In the midst of chaos and smoke, how does it make any sense to be grateful for my father, or for this little cat? Yet everything in us demands that we are thankful for these signs of life. We cling to life in times that seem to shout death.

Rola:

There is an Arabic proverb that says: “God has fed you, eat and feed.” And though I am not a big fan of proverbs (in the Middle East we use all the time and some of them are graceless), but I like this one. It says that receiving a blessing should always prompt us to take part in blessing others.

As Veronica mentioned, gratitude doesn’t occur in a bubble, but has a target, and its target is God. I would add another dimension and it is that gratitude is practical; it is a relational act which cannot happen without others. And by others I mean those who are not necessarily experiencing the same sense of being blessed, the same way we are.

And in this sense I feel like although the Psalms succeed in grasping the depth of the human experience of gratitude, which is a selfish sense of thankfulness for what God has blessed us with, they fail to elaborate on the responsibility that comes with that, to extend that feeling of blessedness to the less fortunate. The main reason for that is that, generally, in much of our and the OT’s context one people’s blessing always comes at the expense of other people’s misery. Our world is not so different today. Veronica and I were discussing earlier this week that privilege does not come without exploitation. The balance is always tipped to one side.

The good news calls us to ask: how can we be thankful while giving others reasons to be thankful.

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Veronica:

When we pray before meals here at Parkview, we often ask God to bless our food and our fellowship and to care for those who have no food. We have faith that God is still at work in feeding, healing, and rescuing. And we also believe that we are called to be part of that work. Our prayer becomes our call. Our hands and feet become the hands and feet of Christ reaching out to a world in need. Because of our gratitude, we are moved to love our neighbors.

I have seen so many of you give thanks in this way. By serving at Loaves and Fishes, by organizing groups to raise awareness and money for cancer patients at Light the Night, by collecting supplies for our ministry partners like Wind, so young adults can move out of homelessness and into their first apartments, by driving someone to church. By visiting people in the hospital and just being with those who are grieving.

Jesus told us “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. When we are in exile times, in grief or mourning, we have the promise of comfort. We shall be comforted. And I do believe that sometimes that comfort comes in the form of the peace of God that passes all understanding.

But here’s the other sometimes. Sometimes, we are comforted by other people who see our grief and love us. And for those of us who aren’t mourning, grieving, and empty right now, we must especially hear the call to care. Because when Jesus said the mourners would be comforted, He was inviting all of us to take part in the restoration of creation, the restoration of hope.