Thankfulness

A Gift, A Giver, Advent, and A Meditation

A short meditation (or if you prefer, contemplation) on thankfulness.

‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.’ —James 1.17

As the year ends, it is a very Christian inclination (indeed, a very human one, if we let it bloom) to want to give thanks, give thanks for the good of the past year. To be thankful. For the American reader, we have the Thanksgiving holiday, though, it seems this day has become more synonymous with bobbing and weaving through the familial-drama of politics and ungenerous discourse than anything else. And so, in the meantime, as we try to slowly reclaim the organized Thanksgiving Day in my home country, and for those who do not live in the United States, we might locate our thanks, here, now, within Advent.

The best place to start with the topic of thanks is with the activity of remembrance. It is an obvious thing to say that to be thankful, you have to be thankful for something. Thanks isn’t quite the same as other things that rise up unprovoked, it is in response to something. We are thankful for this daily bread, for this good health, for this time we have. I want to point something else out. When we are children, we are most aware of the object of thanks, we are thankful for our toy firetruck, our book on dinosaurs, and so on. But as we grow up, we begin to take into account the sacrifice, the intentionality, and the kindness behind a gift. We, with maturing, become more aware of the relational aspect of the gift. That a gift isn’t only an object, but an act: it is both the giving and the gift. The object may have different levels of importance, but a truly good gift is one that combines: forethought, a kind of sacrifice, and no intention of debt or the need for return. This consideration, then, might lend itself to what James is alerting us to, awakening us to. And that, as we take this verse, and consider it in this Advent, we might see afresh the incarnation of the Relational-Gift, God Himself, and His nature, as the origin upon which all other relationships and gifts are only echoes and reflections.

It is though the source of both: all the good we enact, and the good that results, was wrapped up in swaddling clothes; that the author of any love we have ever felt on this planet earth was now laying upon it in a manger, and would, one day, lay under it in a cave. James alerts us to the fact that behind all goodness dwells the sole Original One, who needs nothing, yet creates anyway, and in His creating, created amongst all things, the act of giving, and the gift. And He didn’t simply create, He created that which was ‘good.’ This is what we will concentrate on.

‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.’

The first thing for us to notice about this phrase is that even if it is a part of our lives, we are part of its life, for it is an ancient phrase. And in that span of time, from its writing to our reading, it has held fast a multitude of hearts. That even as it has been read and heard by Christians in a thousand cultures, times, and places, it has set their different eyes on the same God who does not shift like so much of life’s shifting. Wars come and go, cultures and empires rise and fall, and yet we are held by the truth that we are looked after, cared for, whatever comes, on both sides of death even. One can imagine a martyr considering God’s faithfulness on their last day, or a parent reading this promise over their newborn on their first. And amidst our imagining we recall that neither the mountain nor the valley separates us from the love of God.¹

Yet, if we were tempted to think that this verse suits rose-colored-glasses, we should read what comes before. This statement is not naive, or blind to trouble. Doesn’t it come right on the back of James’ encouragement ‘blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial’ and this verse’s implications? That there will be times of trial, and that we will be called to steadfastness, against all odds? And yet if we are tempted to feel alone in this, with God far away, are we not encouraged of this also: ‘nor anything else in all creation’ separates us from the love of God?² That it was, after all, God who was forsaken of God, that we might not be forsaken?³ So this statement is no empty sentimentalism, but is the very break in the shifting shadows above our heads, and the revealing of that which is even higher than those heavenly lights arrayed beyond, scrawled across our skies, higher still than those gas giants, and quasars, to that very reality that breathed them all.

‘Every good gift and every perfect gift’

It is sometimes said to us in conversation that God will tempt us, it is sometimes said that God will ‘test’ us, but after a little more talk in the conversation, we find that what they are describing is not testing but tempting again. ‘But,’ they say, ‘if we simply saw the justification, we would realize that what seems bad is actually good.’ And so are we to accept bad as good, as long as it is conditional? And to go further, it is worth noticing in saying ‘testing,’ while really meaning, ‘tempting,’ they often use those scriptures, scriptures where The Satan is doing the work, not God, to support their point. And so in a chaotic twist they have made dark into light, good into bad, and a god who cannot make up his mind (perhaps, like us) or have a discernible personality. Is that not but just running around in circles with a cord wrapped around us?—we will fall down eventually. Yet if God is both good, and has a perfect mind, as we believe Him to be and have, and, if we listen to our poets, is it not man who wanders and shifts? Perhaps we have been playing flat notes when He is the tuning fork. We bind ourselves with convolutions, and it will only be speech like a double edge sword⁴ that will set us free. If we were clear-eyed about what humans do with their wanderings around the truth, we would find it is better to agree with the Psalmist and James and to remind ourselves that every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from God, and ‘let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.’ A test reveals, a temptation lures, tricks, and ensnares.

‘Good, perfect’

Here the language is important. Good, the Greek word ἀγαθός (agathos) is used. And I take it from commentators that this is used purposely to convey the moral goodness and the intrinsic beneficial quality of what is being described. Perfect is likewise specific, the word τέλειος (teleios) is used to convey that which is mature, complete in its state. And, as we read, we see the word gift is used twice, every good gift and perfect gift. Though ‘gift’ is the same and repeated in the English, as I read again in the commentators, and see for myself in the Greek, what they tell us is that the two gifts are actually two different Greek words that set the scene, a scene that might be read as: the act of giving and the gift itself, this all meant to combine for the reader to emphasize the goodness of the whole. More than a simple repeat, it is meant to build in our minds. And we take away this: it is not only what we receive that is benevolent, but how we receive it, the result is complete, fully formed, and the very path to it is called good.

‘coming down from the Father of lights’

It may be important to our restless souls to notice it is ‘coming down’ and not, ‘has come down’ as though a single, past-tense gift is implied. ‘Coming down’ is a refreshment for those weary souls who think that the gifting is over, and that, in their distress, they are left on the other side of it. This word is coming, and so it is continuous in its gifting. And that, we, like those wilderness wanderers might receive manna for the day, and rest in the night. Though if we are tempted to think that coming down is the measure of distance for a diety far away, should we not remember that He is not far from us?⁵ And so it is, that this God who is with us, called Immanuel, is on-high but not far away. It is He who gives us these gifts, gifts meant for a humanity that He is mindful of. And as He is mindful He is also capable, for He is higher than the very lights above the heads of those He gives rest to, rest even in the wilderness.⁶

‘with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.’

Solidity. Dependability. However un-flashy these terms may seem in a world of innovation and change, they would be better seen juxtaposed next to flux, uncertainty. The unpredictable may make a movie entertaining, but a home uncomfortable. A father who is unpredictable makes for a family life that is amongst other things, tenuous. And in the world of gods and myths, there is a divine multitude who do as they do and their unpredictability added certain terrors to their followers. Zeus called for placating, as Huitzilopochtli and Moloch needed their favor to be renewed. Yet the unchangeable God needs nothing, seeks no games, and wields not capriciousness, but justice.⁷ The laws that undergird the formation of the stars are traces of a law giver who preexists and outlasts them, more solid than even their long lives. The theologians would call this unchanging God’s immutability, the layman would call it trustworthiness.

Ending Notes

‘Thank you.’ It’s such a little phrase, and yet it is a warm fire in a dark desert, a remembrance stone that orients us when we have lost ourselves. It seems like a frail thing in the face of trial. But it is the very keeping of the good, and the keeping alive the acts of this good and the results of them, and though they are in the past, brings them right into the present. It is the bringing into the conscious what even, if they were in the unconscious, were still true, and so we will live conscious of these true things again.

We close with two final themes. The first is thanks as itself. For if God is who He says He is, and this Bible of ours describes the highest reality, then there is a truth in the world that is worth and due all thanks. An entire cosmos spoken forth by a God who is good, just, loving, and relational—thanks-issued-forth would be the most natural thing creatures in that world could ever do, and if they failed, it would seem the very rocks would do it for them.⁸ To exist as He exists, as small working models made in His image, this would be a grand gift beyond comprehension, and further still, when these creatures got tangled in their own trappings, He would empty heaven itself to set them free as a gift, this is better than any god conceived of under heaven. It is the realization that every good and perfect gift comes from a Giver higher than them all, and it is this realization that keeps us from worshipping the gift alone like those at the bottom of the mountain with some once-gift twisted into a calf, and encourages us up the mountain to meet with the One who gives.

And the final theme. Thanks as shelter. We end with the somewhat counterintuitive nature of thanks, thanks as not superfluous, but as leading to our flourishing. Much like a pilgrim stranded in the woods, to make a more robust shelter seems like it will deplete reserves and strength faster than otherwise keeping the shelter that they already have. But when the weather turns, this stronger shelter will prove a life saver, and worth every moment spent. It will keep off the cold of bitterness, the weariness of hopelessness, and the dryness of repetition. This is thanks, not as a rejection of reality, but as a shelter in the shadowed-valley. It will prove to be not something that just keeps us alive, but because of its memory, its story, its nature, it will give us something to keep going with.

1. Romans 8.38-39

2. Romans 8.39

3. Psalm 22, Mark 15.34, 2 Corinthians 4.8-10

4. Revelation 1.16

5. Acts 17.27-28

6. Psalm 8.3-4

7. Acts 17.24-25

8. Philippians 4.8, Luke 19.40