Give Thanks to God This Thanksgiving

In November, two distinct and seemingly different ideas and activities will come into focus at the congregation I serve. These two things are not mutually exclusive however.

On the one hand, we will participate with the rest of the nation in one of the great spiritual traditions of our nation: Thanksgiving. We will begin with our Harvest Dinner on November 10 and then most of us will gather with family and friends on Thanksgiving Day. When we gather on these two occasions, we need to remember that the purpose of Thanksgiving is just that: giving thanks — to God. Contrary to much of the revisionist history that is now taught in America, the original pilgrims invited the native Americans who lived near them to eat with them as a thanksgiving to God, not to thank the “Indians.” The very concept of giving thanks is to thank God for his work in the world and for salvation.

On the other hand, then, we will conclude our thirty-one week journey through The Story of the Bible in November. The Story began with God creating the world and bringing life into the world through the first man and the first woman. We will end The Story by looking at God’s new creation, the new heavens and the new earth, and God’s promise of the final victory for all who believe. Looking forward to that promise is a huge reason for giving thanks to God!

• So ending our look at The Story at Thanksgiving is significant, because we should now have even more reason to thank God. Consider some of the reasons for which we should thank God that we have seen in The Story through the year:
• Following creation, God began to build for himself a people who, through faith, would have fellowship with him. Thank God for those who walked by faith in ancient days before God had fully revealed himself. They pointed the way to faith for us.
• Then, after God’s chosen people were enslaved in Egypt, a foreign land, he acted through a series of divine plagues and through the Passover sacrifices to deliver them from slavery. Thank God that they pointed the way to our deliverance from sin through our own Passover lamb.
• After Israel had escaped from Egypt into the Sinai Wilderness, God gave them the Law, as summarized in the Ten Commandments. Living by that Law does not save us, but thank God that it shows us how to live a Godly life.
• Through his leading of the nation of Israel after they settled in the Promised Land, God demonstrated the principles of his Kingdom and spoke through the prophets to tell us about the deliverer who was to come. Thank God that he kept his promise to send us a deliverer.
• Then God kept his promise and came to earth as God’s Son in the person of Jesus Thank God that Jesus taught us about God’s Kingdom, offered himself as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose from the dead so that we can receive eternal life.

We have a lot to thank God for!! In the last four chapters of The Story we will find there is more to thank God for. We will learn about God’s search and rescue operation in and through the church and we will find how the apostle Paul and others took the Gospel to the entire world, so that we could hear The Story. Finally, The Story will reveal to us our final destiny with the promise of Christ’s return, the establishment of his eternal Kingdom, and the final victory. Give thanks to God this Thanksgiving!!

What Is the Cross That Jesus Calls You to Carry?

The September issue of Christianity Today has an article about a small number of Christian missionaries who call themselves “New Friars.” Like friars from the past, these missionaries live and minister among the poor, people who live on the “crowded margins of society.” Most of these missionaries are from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia.

The article points out that “for the first time in history, one of every two people lives in a city. Some 860 million of these city-dwellers reside in slums—uncertain, cramped, and frequently cruel. Most are there by necessity.” The New Friar missionaries also live in the slums. They are there by choice.

The writer of the article, Kent Annan, spent Easter weekend this year in Bangkok, Thailand, meeting and observing the ministry of some of these missionaries. Among them were:

Michelle Kao: She was a premed student at John Hopkins when she visited Bangkok as part of a missions program. Instead of going to medical school, she moved to Bangkok six years ago. Now she works with Thai church leaders to help people who had been evicted to find land and build new homes. Annan observed that when Kao walks the neighborhood of 3,000 that she lives in she knows the stories of the people she meets.

Anji and Ash Barker: This Australian couple moved into a tiny house in Bangkok eleven years ago where they’ve raised their three children. They have listened to suffering in their neighborhood—”to the cries of a child being abused at night, to the screams of a child being raped by her father, to the aching silence after another child died. They also listened to strengths and dreams and, through friendship and work, found the resources to help those strengths flourish. “

Tim and Amy Hupe: They have lived in Bangkok for five years and have two girls, ages 4 and 6. “They are gathering missionaries and local Thai and Cambodian leaders to serve Cambodians living in Thailand. This includes teenagers who sell flowers in the red-light district (and are pressured to sell much more).”

This brief introduction to these amazing missionaries only scratches the surface of their ministries. They have chosen the life of servanthood, which is central to all followers of Christ.

Jesus himself taught us “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28, also Mark 10:45). Jesus himself ministered to those who live on the margins of society. The New Friar missionaries are certainly following the example of Jesus—and he calls us to serve in his name.

The New Friar missionaries are setting one other example for us that Jesus called for: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). These missionaries, like so many others and like so many Christian today and through the centuries, have laid down their Lower Story lives to live out the Upper Story of the Gospel.

That is also our calling—not just the calling of missionaries. What is the cross that Jesus calls you to carry? What does he call you to deny in order to follow him? To live in God’s Upper Story, we must answer that question.