Thanksgiving makes my mouth water! It’s no secret – I love to eat. Turkey (I’ll have a thigh please), mashed potatoes (with garlic!), stuffing (an appropriate suggestion), a spoonful of cranberry salad (as a garnish) and the appropriate slices of pie (pumpkin, apple, and pecan) make this a great holiday. But even better still are the faces of those around the table. Uncle Gary pushes back and launches into one of his great stories that will make milk come out your nose. The kids anoint themselves with gravy and green beans. Meemaw is there looking like an ancient angel. We also shed a tear for those who aren’t in their places this year.

Yes, thanksgiving is a great holiday, but these days it seems to be falling on hard times. Retailers are pushing Thanksgiving out of the way to make room for more profitable holidays like Halloween and Christmas. Families aren’t what they once were and those that are seem scattered across the country and around the world. From my cynical seat I might remark people who are focused on their rights and entitlements have little room in their hearts for an attitude of gratitude.

That’s one of the reasons worship is so important because worship, by its very definition, is focused on someone else, someone greater than ourselves. We kneel in the shadow of the cross and gratefully express our thanksgiving for someone who wasn’t selfish. We lift our hands in praise of our Father who loves us so much in spite of ourselves. We are filled with the Spirit as we make a joyful noise.

This is going to be a month of transformation. Paul told the Romans:

^{Romans 12:1} I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We are transformed by worship, the renewing of our minds – and here is the special blessing brought on by the attitude of gratitude. Our life becomes more positive, more hopeful, more fun!

The old hymn writer Johnson Oatman caught it in his song:

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

 

 

In the Old Testament, children either ask or are told about the Exodus from Egypt in four places: Deut. 6:20; Exodus 12:26, 13:8, 14. Based on this, the Rabbis created a method of teaching the story of the Exodus that was individualized:

The haggadah speaks of four children: wise, wicked, simple, and one who does not know how to ask. It stresses that by paying close attention to the manner way in which a person asks a question, one can gain an insight into the individual’s character and prepare a suitable reply. (Of course, this mandate to teach one’s children according to their ability applies equally to girls.)^[1]

The Wise Child asks insightful questions and should be answered with precise and explicit information that satisfies his quest for knowledge. On the other hand, the Wicked Child requires a sharp answer to “set his teeth on edge.” “We celebrate the Passover because of what God for us when we went out of Egypt.” In other words, if you would have been there, you would have been left behind to labor as a slave making mud bricks because you do not consider yourself one of us.

There is some debate about the character of the Simple Child. The Hebrew word “tam,” is “usually translated as the slightly derogatory ‘simple,’ it more probably is meant as a praiseworthy characteristic, as in the verse commanding the Jew to be tam (wholehearted) with the Lord your God (Deut. 18:13).”[2] Jesus said nearly the same thing: “²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22, 23) The word “healthy” literally means “being motivated by singleness of purpose so as to be open and aboveboard, single, without guile, sincere, straightforward.”[3]

The final child, the one who does not even know how to ask because he doesn’t even realize there are questions he should ask, is taught with care. “The haggadah begins its discussion of this child with the words ‘at p’tach lo’ (you should begin for him). … This suggests that this child should be approached with the gentle understanding and warmth generally associated with the mother. It is necessary to patiently encourage the child to formulate questions and then provide answers at a level that the child can comprehend.”

Shlomo Riskin cites a profound interpretation ascribed to Joseph Isaac Schneerson, a former Lubavitcher rebbe:

The Four Children represent the four generations of the American experience. The Wise Child represents the European roots, the generation of the grandparents who came to America with beard and earlocks, dressed in shtreimel and kapote, steeped in piety, with a love for learning and profound knowledge of the Jewish tradition. Their progeny (the Wicked Child), brought up within the American “melting pot,” rejected his parent’s customs and ways of thought … Turning his back on the glories of the Jewish tradition, this child often became successful in business but was cynical in his outlook. The third generation, the Simple Child, is confused. He watched his grandfather making Kiddush on Friday night and his father standing by silently, perhaps resentfully, impatient to prepare for business on Saturday morning … The fourth generation, the Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask, offspring of the Simple Child, is the greatest tragedy of all. He was born after his great-grandparents had died. He knows only his totally assimilated grandfather (Wicked Child) and his religiously confused father … This is our mute American generation, the generation who thought it was someone’s birthday when she saw her great-grandmother lighting the festival candles.

Riskin adds that there is also a fifth generation, so far removed from Judaism that it is unaware that it is Passover. At least the wicked child is attending the seder, though he cannot fathom how it relates to his life, as is the one who does not know how to ask, despite the fact that he finds it beyond his understanding. Tragically, an increasing number of American Jews are not even present at the seder. When opening the door for Elijah the Prophet, we should also keep it open for those masses of assimilated Jews who have not yet entered. In this way, Elijah can fulfill the promise “to reconcile parents with children and children with their parents” (Mal. 3:24). These fifth-generation children must be made aware of their lost heritage before we can dare expect the redemption of the Messianic Age.^[4]

 

Perhaps the same can be said of the Restoration Movement. Those of the first generation were excited about their faith. They searched the Bible diligently and practiced their faith radically. The second generation understood the faith of their fathers, but they began codifying their parents discoveries rather than searching on their own. The third generation was steeped in tradition and nostalgia, while to the fourth generation it all seemed rather old-fashioned and hardly relevant. Is it no wonder the fifth generation seems confused and seeks something their great-great-grandparents knew?

^[1] Eisenberg, R. L. (2004). The JPS guide to Jewish traditions (1st ed., p. 279). Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 104). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

^[4] Eisenberg.

When John F. Kennedy and the men of PT 109 were rescued in the Solomon Islands, one of the crewmembers, Motor Machinist Mate William Johnston, went topside and gratefully sat beside his island rescuers.

He smiled. They smiled. He tried to talk, but what do you say? The islanders had been educated in a Christian mission. Johnston had gone to Bible school. Then they all grinned and began to sing: “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” and they sang it all the way back to the American Navy base.

Ana B. Warner’s children’s song is engraved on our hearts, but few people know her story. Ana’s father nearly lost everything in the “Panic of 1837.” They were forced to move from their beautiful townhouse in New York and the family retired to a little Revolutionary War house on Constitution Island. It was just across the river from the Military Academy at West Point where her uncle had been the chaplain.

Ana’s older sister, Susan, continued to hold Bible classes for the cadets. Ana would pick wild flowers and give them to the soldiers to decorate their rooms. When the cadets graduated, the sisters kept up a lively correspondence with them. As the soldiers advanced in rank, they still remembered the two sisters who would row across the river and bring them back to their little home to study the Bible on Sundays. Today, the sisters are still honored at West Point. They are the only two civilians buried in the military cemetery there and their little home is maintained as a museum just the way it was in the mid-1800s.

The words to the song come from one of the many stories the girls wrote to help support their struggling family. In their book, Say and Seal, a beloved schoolteacher sang, “Jesus Loves Me” to a little boy who was very ill. Later, some of the stanzas were re-written by David Rutherford McGuire, and the chorus was written by the man who wrote the music, William Bradbury who wrote the tunes for ‘Tis Midnight and on Olive’s Brow, Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us, He Leadeth Me, My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, and many more.

Here are Ana’s original words:

Jesus loves me! this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; they are weak but He is strong.
Jesus loves me! loves me still, tho I’m very weak and ill, that I might from sin be free, bled and died upon the tree.
Jesus loves me! He who died heaven’s gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin, let His little child come in.
Jesus loves me! He will stay close beside me all the way. Thou hast bled and died for me; I will henceforth live for Thee.

Chorus: Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

 

It’s almost time again for the Olympic Games. They are scheduled for summer 2016 in Brazil and I’m excited. Most Christians know Paul describes the Christian life as a “race” (2 Timothy 4:7), but they may not know Paul has given this race a name: the sunathalon (pronounced “soon-ath-a-lon”).

We are familiar with the decathlon, a race of ten (deca‐) events; and the pentathlon, a contest with five (pente‐) events, but the sunathalon is a race of cooperation. Sun‐ means “with” and athalon means competition. It’s a “together race!”

In his letter to the Philippians (4:2, 3), Paul tells Euodia and Syntyche to cooperate as “yoke‐fellows” because they are running a sunathalon with Clement and Paul’s fellow‐workers. (The Greek word sunathalon is translated by the phrase “labored side by side” in many English Bibles.)

Now can you picture the poor farmer harnessing two rebel oxen to a yoke with each beast trying to pull the plow in a different direction? On the other hand, when two powerful beasts pull in unison and work in harmony, there is no limit to what can be accomplished!

One of our biggest faults as Christians has been to forget our brothers and sisters in our personal race for life – an idea completely foreign to the New Testament. Rather, we should think of our life more like a three-legged race.

Don’t you remember tying your legs together with dad’s old neckties and trying to stay in step? We all ran down the grassy field arm in arm, chanting cadence – “left, right, left, right!” We might fall down in a big tangle, but we laughed and got back up again and raced together.

Now imagine the fun as 50 – 100 – 300 Christians, arm in arm, laughing and singing cross the finish line! It’s a beautiful thing when we work together in harmony. Remember: no one crosses the heavenly finish line alone!