Good God?

“To you will I offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” Psalm 116:17

I forget when I started reading Ann Voskamp’s “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are”. But I can find out by pulling out my old journals and looking for no.1 of my praise and thanksgiving list. I am now in no. 7743. Every day, I start with counting my blessings. There is always plenty to thank God for even in days when there is bad news or some horrible disaster. The fact that we can breathe without an oxygen tank beside us, that we can walk, that we can remember things, that we are able to love, forgive, get excited. A friend on Facebook started her list with thankfulness for coffee. My 7743 list doesn’t even contain the word coffee. Yet. Or chocolates! Salmon sushi! 

I like the way Ann Voskamp writes, and speaks. “How,” she wondered, “do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does a life of gratitude look like when your days are gritty, long, and sometimes dark? What is God providing here and now?” When she started chronicling life’s gifts, it was transformative. 

She starts her story telling when she is four years old and already enveloped in grief. Her little sister Aimee was crushed by a delivery truck with a heavy load when she wandered close after a cat. The driver sobbed that he had not seen her and her mom had witnessed it all with a blood curdling scream. How do you get through something like that? 

“Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights... where is God really? How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die...Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I live fully when life is full of hurt?” Many ask these questions. Years can pass and sometimes there are no answers.

For Ann the answer came in “eucharisteo”, thanksgiving which has as its root word, “charis” meaning grace, “chara” meaning joy. “Deep joy can only be found at the table of euCHARisteo, the table of thanksgiving. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.” 

Lord, may I remember everyday to give you a sacrifice of thanksgiving, especially during dark days.