| Perhaps the most difficult thing to do in life is to thank God in times of trouble and anxiety. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes that we are to be “giving thanks always for all things unto God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20) In the darkness it is challenging to pray the prayers of light. Yet as we gather to celebrate our nation’s Thanksgiving holiday, during this time when a pandemic controls and changes so much of our life, we do well to remember, as did the Holy Righteous Prophet Job, that suffering and troubles can lead us to thanksgiving, that we are instructed about life and about our truest selves through them, and that the voice of God can beckon to us through the shadows to come nearer to His loving heart.
Trouble may serve to correct our life’s journey. As the author of Hebrews notes, “those whom God loves He stands by them to correct, to change their direction, to guide us to a more spiritual way of living. (Hebrews 12) In the same Epistle, we learn that though our sufferings and troubles may hurt from a natural point of view, they contain a hidden blessing for us: they summon us to to re-establish what is truly important in our lives, to reorganize our priorities around God rather than to follow the transient call of a world that seems to be “bleeding out” its faith. For this Divine transformation we can give thanks.
Trouble may bring a deepening dependency on God. Our human sufferings and difficulties can bring us to Christ the Healer so that we might depend more upon Him than upon our own wiles and wisdom. The apostle Paul had a thorn in his flesh and he said, “For this thing I besought the Lord three times that He might take it from me. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore do I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). If your troubles cause you to depend more upon God, that is a grace and blessing. If your problems force you to turn everything over to Him, to surrender to His power within you — that is a gift. For this gift we can give thanks.
Trouble can bring the impulse to reach out. St. Paul knew much sorrow and pain, physically and spiritually, and he responded: “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). If seeing our own suffering and anxiety moves us to reach out to family members, to friends, fellow believers, and total strangers, to any whose pain is obviously greater and more disabling than our own — words about love are turned into action and the idea of Christ becomes the reality of His hands, his feet, and His compassionate heart. For this we can give thanks.
Trouble may encourage patience and endurance. The Lord Jesus was without sin, but not without suffering. In his Epistle, St. James writes: “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” (James 1:4) The word “perfect” does not mean sinless, it means mature in holiness. The word “patience” means endurance. Like the Prophet Job, our troubles can call us to endure, not to give in or give up, to perhaps stumble and fall into dejection, but then rise up again to move ahead in our lives. Being patient is a daunting challenge. Our sufferings and anxieties can become hard obstacles to overcome, but they remind us that we don’t sharpen an axe on a pound of butter. We can thank God for this lesson of patient endurance.
Trouble may result in its exact opposite. The Apostle Peter in his first Epistle writes: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. (1 Peter 4:12-14) Our “fiery trials”, whatever they may be, can actually result in the praise of God and in our revelation of His glory among us. The Holy Protomartyr St. Stephen, whose feast day we commemorate next month, is described in the Acts of the Apostles as “a man of faith and of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 6:5) While he was being martyred by stoning, Scripture reminds us that his face shone like the face of an angel. In our patient endurance and prayer through our struggles, we too can reveal the glory of God. For that we can give thanks and praise.
Trouble can remind us that our God is ultimately mystery. The first question we often ask in our sufferings and struggles is “Why is God doing this to me?” In the current pandemic, our world asks the same question. From centuries and centuries ago the Prophet Isaiah gives the answer: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your Thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) God is and does as He wills. There are things we cannot explain or understand. But we don’t give Him thanks because we “have him figured out.” We give Him thanks and praise because, as the Apostle St. John reminds us, “He is love.” We can trust Him though we cannot pierce through His essence. We can however, as St. Gregory Palamas teaches, see, feel, and touch Him in His “energies”, in the people He sends into our lives, in our human experiences, in how He acts in and for us, in the healings that take place, the blessings that He provides, and in the Divine Wisdom that far exceeds our poor minds’ ability to understand. This certainly is cause for us to give thanks.
Brothers and sisters, in the face of COVID-19 with all its threats and our anxieties, when we seem to be battered around by a microscopic organism that has taken so many lives from us, in the face of all of these, we can give praise to God around our Thanksgiving table for the blessings mentioned above. They may be unseen and unsuspected. They may even seem remote and “out of reach” for us. But there is cause for thanks and for hope, and there are signs of the shadows dissipating and the light soon to be returning. Let us together keep in mind and heart the words of St. Paul: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18) St. Paul was not saying the glory offsets the sufferings. Instead, he was saying that there’s no comparison. This is our faith. What a day that will be when God turns every tear into a precious pearl and when we understand that He has not forsaken us, but, to the contrary, has walked our way with us – step by bumpy step. To Him be honor and glory, power, wisdom and might, from the rising of the sun even unto its setting! Amen! I wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving and peace in your restless hearts!
Faithfully in the Lord,
Fr. Dimitrios |
