Happy Thanksgiving
The world is in turmoil, but
even in the midst of chaos both here and abroad, the Apostle Paul tells us to
be thankful. “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in
Christ Jesus” (1Thess 5:16-18 NIV).
2 comments:
I wholeheartedly agree!
Gail;
-----What goes forward and backward at the same time and takes you everywhere you go? Definitely its a silly riddle, but there’s truth in its fact. Answer: the mind. Even at the simple level of seeing or hearing, the mind gathers sights and sounds as it goes forward, but almost simultaneously it calls up recollections by which to identify the new sights and sounds. In its more higher functions, I sit at my desk with a mind moving forward in planning for the day while comparing those plans with skills collected through the past in order to strategize the plans for success.
-----It doesn’t matter how simple or complex the moment, God directs our footsteps in the path we‘ve chosen. He is more intimately involved in every last detail of all substances of our moments than we can perceive. It is love.
-----Something strange about how the stream of consciousness forms from all that neural activity between your ears is its being a reflection. Upon what? Well, upon itself. “As in water face answers to face, so the mind of man reflects the man.” (Prov 27:19) I love the Bible. It beat the psychologists to this truism by some three thousand years. But, leaving the technicalities aside, this reflective process making up your very stream of consciousness is also a “going forward and backward at the same time” kind of thing.
-----OK. So what? Thanking someone for what they’ve done comes from your mind’s acknowledgement of the benefit received becoming tied to the known benefactor about whom emotions of admiration, respect, and connection are forming. The subconscious really sticks to benefits and from whence they came, because the conscious mind likes bennies so much that it is always ready for more. So it will want a certain portion of the subconscious’s involvement in the planning process to just be naturally throwing up these acknowledged sources of benefit when determining the next path to travel.
-----Thanking God in every circumstance requires the mind to either find or ascribe a benefit to whatever circumstance is the object of the thanking. Well now, that’s going to require some meditation, because many circumstances are not beneficial on their surface. Rather, their immediate appearance is at least somewhat detrimental or problematic. So, in this decaying universe, we interrelate what the Bible informs us about God’s beneficial nature to the difficulties we have. The trick is to find the true meanings of our moments. And the truth is that in ways more intimate than we can imagine, Jesus Christ is involved with every electron and proton of our existence at all moments, upholding all things by His word of power. Therefore, at some point in the reckoning, everything is good just because Christ is in control. Yet there's always a few good specifics to discover about any particular situation.
-----So, immediately, two good things are produced by thanking God in all circumstances: 1) God wants His people to meditate. It gives us good meditation homework, and 2) it builds confidence into every nook and cranny of the subconscious because it trains it to find the true source of our benefits - Our Lord God - as the basis of our confidence.
-----Thanksgiving gets the “goes backward” part of our minds into the Lord. Along these same lines, constant praying puts the “goes forward“ part into Him. Continuous thanksgiving and prayer throws the Lord square into the middle of the reflection of the man the mind is. And that’s pretty good stuff for Him to make our minds to work, certainly something worthy of thanksgiving in itself. So. Let’s update the riddle a bit: “What goes backward in the Lord and forward in the Lord at the same time and takes us everywhere we go?” Answer: the mind always thanking and entreating the Lord.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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