Thanksgiving Message 2016

Today is Thanksgiving in America.

God said that we should celebrate holidays that help establish a rhythm of work and rest. There’s an awful lot more behind all that, of course. By absorbing the example of Moses’ Covenant, we learn that it has to represent at least two things: (1) the rhythm of seasons and God’s provision, but also (2) it should celebrate signal moments when God acted to establish and preserve the community. If you think about it just a little bit, you would understand the so-called “Puritan Work Ethic” is neither precisely Puritan nor an ethic, but an excuse for brutal exploitation. That mythical beast permits holidays only begrudgingly, and would ignore the sabbatical cycle of human existence. The whole thing reduces humanity to mere economic units, a pure manifestation of Western materialism. Let us cease serving Mammon.

America is in deep doo-doo for ignoring all the rhythms and cycles God revealed in His Word, among a host of other heathen devotions the earn His wrath. But God has, for reasons only He understands, turned away His full wrath for moment. What we know is that His decision coincided with our discovery of a conscious revival of walking by the heart and not the head. In my own heart, which sometimes catches prophetic glimpses of God’s ways because He simply feels like telling us things, I sense that this sparing (a kind of Passover) has to do with a restoration of the Covenant of Heart. Don’t get all silly thinking that’s a sacred name just because I put it in caps. It’s just a provisional label; a personal name for the Covenant of Christ’s Blood and you need not buy into. But I am convinced that because there are people serving Him who openly talk about this heart-led life, He’s ready to take things in a different direction and offer a larger space for repentance.

So today I give thanks first and foremost for being alive and aware in this special moment in human history. We have this treasure in our battered and cracked earthen vessels seeking to share the one thing that makes life in this realm tolerable. It’s not so much the vessels but the treasure that matters. We keep trying to show it to empty folks in hopes something inside their souls will awaken and open to receive their own share of treasure. But only God does the awakening; it’s His hand alone. If all we do is provoke human reason, we’ve accomplished nothing.

So if you are caught in the American rhythm of things, as I am, I hope that today you have devoted just a little bit of time giving thanks for a sense of heart-led calling, or praying that you can hear that calling soon. It’s there. Every one of you who reads this stuff and walks in the heart of faith and conviction have a calling. He fully intends to use each of us to help redeem just a few other folks chosen for a heart-mind awareness. Some of you are already up to your elbows in the work, and some are waiting for something to shift in the context before it becomes more obvious. Some of you are somewhere in between, moving toward a realization.

Wherever you are on this path, give thanks for His mighty gifts, and prepare your heart for a clarity of commitment.