On Giving Thanks, Fairness and the Heart
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Was terribly devastated a few days ago when everyone in school kept asking me if I could go out for the next few days. It felt like I was letting others down or simply being a goody two shoes and mugging at home. Frankly I don’t like mugging and frankly, it’s not fun staying at home. So by and by things got pretty disheartening, felt like a long ride down guilt trip lane and was sitting in the bus pondering over my misfortune. Then it struck me like a bolt from the blue. What happened to giving thanks?
Now usually the story would go where I would be like EPIPHANY! And start thinking how much I have to give thanks for. But today was kinda different. The next thought was can one give thanks when one doesn’t feel like it? Haha funny thing is as much as I like to reason things out in my head, my feelings more often than not get the better of me. Thus the dilemma, if one’s heart is not in the overjoyed mood of giving thanks, can one do so?
Strikes me that more often than not, we hear the phrase God loves a cheerful giver. Cheerful would be the key word here rather than giver. So would it be right to give grudgingly, I mean, come on who wouldn’t want something free (haha typical)? Similarly, does it matter how we feel as long as we give thanks? But it makes me wonder then, if our feelings can be changed with our head.
Funny enough, I got part of my answer upon reaching home. It was in the form of an email from Andrew Chong, one of those forwarded messages that span half the galaxy. The author of the mail was none other than Rick Warren himself. He was talking about problems. One part of the message he wrote ‘we can either focus on our problems or our problems’. Struck me that it was true, that it was on how much we forced ourselves to look away from our troubles that sometimes (only sometimes, especially those times when the problem is ourselves really) that we can make it all ‘go away’. But still, the problem was not realllllllllly solved. What do we do about the feelings part, you know the nagging feeling that life just isn’t fair.
The more I thought about it over the next few days, the more I got closer to the answer. First I realised that thinking about how much better off you are then other people doesn’t really work. Yeap like when your mum tells you how many starving children there are in Africa and you go like, but lunch really tastes bad so that’s not the point. The whole comparison thing only gives you a chance to compare yourself with those better, not only those worse off than you are, so seriously, don’t try this on your kids. It doesn’t make sense.
Then I realised that actually, giving thanks really isn’t about how much better off you are than the fella next to you or is it entirely about how many good things have happened to you in the past week. It’s not even about that good grades you got cause you prayed or the many good deeds you’ve done. It simply because God loves You. Job fell into the trap of ‘justifying himself rather than God’ (Job 32: 2) God gives and takes away. It’s really not about us. It’s about him. There is much joy to be found knowing that God loves me. It’s by that knowledge that I can be happy and I can give thanks again =D ~In the silence...Im waiting to hear your voice~
