When Giving Thanks is Costly

This year I had the assignment of going to our friendly supermarket to order a turkey. This was in preparation to host all the field staff working with our mission in France for a big Thanksgiving meal. There is no frozen turkey section in the grocery stores here, so.turkeys must be ordered in advance for them to come whole - and they don’t come frozen. Usually they come wrapped loosely in plastic and placed in a cardboard box. This is probably just as good, because I remember once years ago when we were rookie turkey chefs and we we didn’t begin thawing the frozen turkey early enough. It eventually would come out of the oven nice and done, but not before our hands were raw, and would be for days afterward, due to our vigorous massaging of the turkey under water in order  to get it to soft enough to cook.

My main goal this time in ordering the bird was to make sure it would yield enough meat to feed all our guests.  Satisfied that I chosen well, I left the store last week with my pink copy of the order slip. Unfortunately, I never thought to check the price per kilogram, just glad that we would have a bird in time. So yesterday when I returned to pick up the turkey, the butcher put it on the scale and rang it up. I did a double take and about doubled over when I saw the price - 75 euros!  That’s right folks. The privilege of asking for white, dark or drumstick this year is going to cost us about the price of a hotel room.

I remember another Thanksgiving where having a turkey on Thanksgiving was probably even more costly to someone. When we were living in Bangladesh, turkeys were not something available in stores. This particular year,  a pastor was coming to visit and decided to bless us by bringing a turkey in his suitcase. He packed the bag with dry ice, put the turkey inside and hoped it would stay cold all the way through the 22 hour flight from the U.S. His hopes of sneaking the meat product through customs seemed to be dashed as he watched his suitcase come down the baggage claim belt and noticed a layer of frost had formed on the outside of his suitcase because of the dry ice. He imagined a scowling customs agent tipped off by his frosty suitcase, fining him for having commited a "fowl". He tried not to look suspicious as he exited the airport and fortunately, the turkey did not get confiscated and made it safely to the Thanksgiving table that year.

It’s amazing what lengths we will go to have the trappings we associate with giving thanks. But the reality is that I don’t need a turkey to be thankful. And there are many other things we might enjoy or think we need to adequately thank God.  Polished worship bands, expensive presentation software, complex lighting systems, and even smoke machines in many churches help set the atmosphere for thanking God in worship. But the most costly thing in giving thanks is not the stuff we do it with. It’s always when we pay the price necessary for getting our hearts into an attitude of humble and sincere gratitude. That’s still the price God sees as a worthwhile investment.

Call Waiting

On July 14th, France’s National Day, better known as Bastille Day, we were trying to enjoy an impromptu picnic at Grenoble’s Parc Mistral. A handful of us had gathered on the dry cement of a local  monument, playing cards as we waited for the fireworks to start. It had been raining off and on all day, and a recent break in the weather had given us hope that the annual municipal  “feu d’artifice” display would go through as planned. But as we waited, a last minute deluge just before dusk sent everyone scurrying for cover.  We reluctantly headed home, disappointed that after hours of waiting, we would not see any fireworks this year after all.

Little did we know, that 380 kilometers away in Nice, there would be those that evening whose enjoyment of fireworks would end in something far more horrible than disappointment. A different kind of dark cloud loomed over this gathering of families and children, that would also see people fleeing for cover but cast a sickening and horrible dark pall over the festivities of an entire nation. Ironically, if the fireworks in that city had been cancelled as it was in ours, a tragedy might possibly have been avoided.  But instead, as the smoke of the last fireworks dissipated in the clear coastal skies over the Promenade des Anglais, hatred in the form of a man and a large rented truck prematurely ended the lives of 84 innocent people and seriously wounded scores more.

The carnage was nearly incomprehensible. As many bodies lay motionless, strewn here and there in the wake of the attack, one off-duty paramedic instinctively tried to get to those who urgently needed medical care. But he was held back by police who had created a perimeter around the scene, fearing that the vehicle which had just torn through the crowd could be full of explosives and go off at any time. He shared how he began hearing a faint chorus of unanswered cell-phones, the blue light from their screens eerily illuminating the darkness from the pockets and purses of the deceased.

One can only imagine the feelings of desperation and dread of family and friends, quickly having been alerted by the media of what had just taken place, on the other end of those unsuccessful phone calls. As I thought of these loved ones, I also couldn’t help but make the comparison to God’s attempts in these trying days to reach out to France. Like a loving Father, he too is desperate to connect with those who are exposed to the attacks of an enemy. But too often, those He loves and wishes to speak to are unable to hear His call because the events of life have rendered them unresponsive and spiritually dead.

What is it that holds me back from rushing to the aid of those who lay numb and immovable in their personal pain and agony?  During danger and crisis, many people run away as they go into self-preservation mode. But for those called and trained to rescue and heal, there is no place for fear, indifference or inaction in the face of tragedy. We are surrounded every day by victims of a real and relentless devil who is raging in his attempts to indiscriminately kill and destroy. And it should break our hearts, as it does God’s, that His calls offering help and concern go mostly unanswered.

The Museum of Me

News from France this week broadcast bizarre images of Paris residents navigating boats down flooded streets. Tourists who would normally be shopping, were now sopping.  Due to torrential rains, the Seine river, which snakes through and around the capital, had crested at 20 feet above normal, shutting down metro lines and closing many tourist sites. The City of Lights, now had become a city of plight, as many visitors were forced to rethink their itineraries, cancel tickets and have a literal damper put on their dream vacations.

In an unprecedented move, curators at the Louvre had to move to higher ground 150,000 artifacts and works of art that had been stored in the basement of the famous landmark in order to save them from potential damage.  Who knew that a museum that already boasted 380,000 individual cultural treasures, all accessible to the public, had so much more hidden below the surface?  It took a disaster to bring what was hidden out of its unexplored recesses.

Have you ever noticed how a crisis tends to bring to the surface of our lives things that we maybe did not realize were there?  We usually keep the best looking and most interesting part of us

accessible above the surface. But it’s what we either consciously or unconsciously keep buried in the dark storerooms of our soul that we deem unfit to be viewed by the public. And they usually stay where we want them -  safely tucked away under lock and key. That is until a flood of stress or worry forces them to higher ground and we become acutely aware and unmistakably uncomfortable with what is being dredged up and dusted off.

I turned 51 this year and a recent deluge precipitated some murky swirling deep waters. And let’s just say I was keeping some old bones (I prefer to not use the word skeletons) where I knew my emotional elevator rarely went.  Before I knew it, though, old and unpleasant musty things from my private stockpile of memories and experiences were being hauled up from sub-terrain of my past. It was unanticipated and uncomfortable. These historical articles had not been sanitized or polished and were definitely now unprotected.

But the truth is, it was their previously undetected hiding place that actually made me more vulnerable. Those unsightly relics are now getting a proper cleaning and actually look pretty acceptable next to the old exhibit’s standard fare. There’s now a bit less lying in the underbelly of my life that makes me liable and I’ve found that what I considered too ugly or damaged is actually worth more than I thought when seen in a better light. In the Museum of Me, I’ve found it’s just best to get everything out into view while remembering a couple of things. One, don’t expect that everyone will be able to accurately appraise every article’s real value; and two, every artifact from our past together makes up a rare and unique collection that has to be seen in its entirety to be truly treasured.