By Elizabeth Carpenter
It is easy to be thankful when everything is going well—our important relationships are healthy and mutually satisfying, the job is rewarding and secure, the kids are thriving, the economy is booming, nobody is sick or suffering any serious loss, the future looks rosy. But how to be thankful when things are not going so well? The company is on shaky ground and the job may disappear; the kids are going through a really rough time; the economy appears as unstable as it has been in many years; people we love are seriously ill or have died; the future is uncertain. What do we find to be thankful for under those circumstances? What can I say to those suffering, to you, about these things in your lives?
I will not offer the kind of trite encouragement intended to make one “look on the bright side” of every situation. That would be to trivialize the depth of your pain and suffering.
I will not say, “God never sends us more than we can bear,” because I think that is untrue on two accounts. First, some people do actually crack and break under the strain of their burdens; and, second, I don’t believe God “sends” everything that happens in this world. Why try to cure illness if it comes as God’s will? If God wanted people to be sick, Jesus would not have gone about healing the suffering. If everything that happened were the will of God, there would have been no need of the prophets to tell us to change our ways. Surely we don’t think that the evils which human beings have perpetrated upon one another throughout history have been administered in accordance with the will of God. Human beings have free will and often act contrary to what Jesus and the prophets tell us is the will of God.
I also think, though I cannot prove it, that there is a degree of randomness in the universe, that just as God granted free will to human beings, the universe does sometimes “do its own thing.” Or maybe we just cannot discern the level of determinism that may be operating; I don’t know. I don’t think God chooses one child to have cancer and another to be born hopelessly deformed and another to be mentally deficient. Jesus said of the man born blind, “Don’t try to figure out why this happened, but let’s see how God might be glorified in healing him now.” I will accept that admonition and not try to explain why evil exists in this world.
What can we count on? I believe that we can count on Jesus to be faithful, to be with us always, in our joy and in our sorrow. I believe we can count on the Holy Spirit to bring us the wisdom and comfort and strength we must have to get through times that truly try our souls. And I believe that God gives us into one another’s care and keeping, to help us bear one another’s burdens, to pour out our love and caring in ways that testify to the truth that we are truly members one of another. God’s love is manifest in the love we share. I am deeply thankful for the love I see operating among us and for all the gifts of God that bind our hearts to him and to one another.
The Rev. Elizabeth Carpenter is rector of St. Anne’s Church, Damascus, Md.