But have you ever wondered how that happens? How does it transpire that couples who love each other to death end up sniping at each other constantly, and end up slagging each other off to mutual acquaintances and we think it's normal? Shouldn't that be a pretty big deviation from what we're expecting? Well, hold the phone, fibber macgee, because that's what this is going to be all about. Because we're in the season of thanksgiving, and it's the season in which we, hopefully, will be looking a little closer at what we have to be thankful for.
You see, folks, it's really easy for us to fall out of love with stuff, be it each other, God, our nation, our family, whatever. It's really easy for us to fall out of love, though. And the biggest way in which we do that is when we take each other or anything else for granted. It's a major, MAJOR problem. In fact, facing people of our persuasion (white, middle class, living in the first world), it may be the biggest problem driving an awful lot of unhappiness. We are people who are generally dissatisfied with the amazing lives we live. Generally. You may think this doesn't apply to you, but it almost certainly does. And I'll tell you how I know this.
I know this because you are probably someone living in the first world, bombarded by advertising all day, and continually being told that your life up until this moment has been nothing but a failure, which could only be rectified by purchasing the latest product or service. Think about this, as I've said many times,that 99% of ads these days say very little about the product or service in question, and usually just says a lot about your life as a failure. You're not being sold the product, you're being sold the lifestyle, which weirdly enough never shows up after you purchase the product. Weird right?
Anyhow, knowing that you're being marketed to in a certain way should explain something to you, or at least make it clear. It should make things clear that you're being approached in your weakness as a satisfied person. Have you ever asked yourself why it is that your house is like mine, a graveyard of thing that you thought would fill the gap in your life? Well, it's for that reason, that you were sold them under false pretences.
What's the solution? Well, it's not too complicated. Have you ever found something in your house that you were sure you'd lost forever? Ever been looking for something sensible, like a hammer or whatever, in your
Seeing things with fresh eyes is fundamental to not just this story, but to the Christian experience in general. Look at the reading that we had from Sunday, in which ten lepers asked Jesus for healing on the road to Jerusalem.
12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy[a] met him. They stood at a distance13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
14 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.
15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”
As I mentioned on Sunday, part of what is important in this is that this is a foreigner, someone looking at Jesus and his ministry, and possibly the faithful God himself, with fresh eyes. Someone capable of doing what we are incapable of doing, of looking at this relationship with fresh eyes, and seeing it perhaps almost for the first time. Seeing Jesus from the outside instead of from the inside. Because Jesus, like everything else, gets a little drab the closer we are to him. As the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. It's a real thing. And we've lost that ability to see Jesus with those fresh eyes, instead seeing so many many other things rather than God in human form. We see the pews, we see the potlucks, we see the narthex, the elders, the council, in fact, we see everything but God in human form. His news about forgiveness of sins was great a while ago, but now, well, it's old, daddy-o. But looking at things with fresh eyes is key to finding satisfaction not just with God, but with everything else, too. Sure enough, as I said on Sunday, do you have any idea how paradisical your life would appear to someone from Syria? It would doubtlessly be paradise. Nobody would be trying to kill them, nobody would be trying to bomb them out, the government wouldn't be trying to gas them to death, there wouldn't be war all around them all the time, and it would be wondrous. What do you think they'd thank God for on Thanksgiving? Just pumpkin pie lattes? Or that they live in paradise.
Your life is pretty amazing. It might not seem like it, because you're viewing it from the inside, but take a second to look at it from the outside. Try to see your life as though you were a foreigner. Try to see your wife or husband from the outside, as you used to. Try to see your house not as someone living it, but as someone shopping for it, someone homeless, someone from Syria whose home has been bombed out. Try to see your office not as your cubicle, but as someone who is unemployed, and desperately seeking work. Try to see your cars not as the person who had to drive it, but as someone who has to walk everywhere. When you look at your faith, at God, see him not as a lifelong Christian who is kind of bored with the whole thing, but as someone bent double under the weight of their sin, desperate to be free of it.
In a sense, at Thanksgiving, it's time not just to be thankful for big meals, but thankful for the regularity of our lives, the routine, and asking that we may find joy in it again. Or, as GK Chesterton puts it:
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun: and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.
It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
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