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“Thank You Lord”
I am a fellow who is driven by gratitude. I don't know anyone who has more reason to be grateful to God than me. I'm the most contented man I know. I'm not running from anything. I'm not running for anything. The truth is, I'm not running at all. I'm mostly just sitting and counting my blessings. I've been thinking about what I can do to express my gratitude to God at this Thanksgiving season.
Some folk will fret during the Christmas season about gift giving to people who have everything. I'm in that dilemma with God right now. What do you give to a God who has everything? I've been meditating on the 50th Psalm. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is verse 9 where the Lord God says, “I will take no bull from your house.” Now, I digress for a moment: this is important for us to know. You just can't pull anything over on the Lord! Who would want a God who was a sucker for some of the ruses we try to pull. If we take that verse at face value and without any context, it's pretty funny isn't it? Kinda makes you want to toss your hat into the air and cheer for God, doesn't it? God is a long suffering Deity. How tired the Divinity must get looking at the thin veneer of religiosity covering hosts of people whose behavior reveals nothing of the spirit of Jesus. “I will take no bull from your house.” Don't you love it?
Actually, God is talking about real beef. Read the Psalm and you discover that he is saying he doesn't need the burnt sacrifices of people's livestock. He already owns the beasts of the forest and the cattle on a thousand hills. What he really wants is a simple, sincere “Thank you!” That's shockingly modest isn't it?
Still in this frame of mind, I was driving along Poplar Tent Road between Huntersville and Concord when I spotted a row of cotton running parallel to the road. It wasn't a patch, just a single row. It was loaded with open bolls. The fibers were white against the blackened stalks. It was raining and the skies were dark. It was a dismal sight. Still, that row of cotton stood against the elements. I wondered what it was all about. Was it a defiant homage to Dixie? I tried to sing a few lines: “I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.”
Maybe, I thought, the person who planted that row of cotton was trying to raise a kind of “Ebenezer.” You know how the Israelites in ancient times used to have a lot of trouble with a bunch of rowdies called Philistines? Well, once the Philistines were having their way with the Israelites and suddenly the Israelites reared their backs, stood their ground and defeated their nemesis. That's when Samuel took a stone and set it up as a memorial marker of that time when God helped Israel. He named the stone “Ebenezer,” which means “the stone of help.” It marked the time when the Lord helped Israel, as Samuel cautiously pointed out, “Thus far.” You can read the story in 1 Samuel, Chapter 7.
Anyhow, I decided that at this Thanksgiving I'll just take God at his word and say, “Thank you.” Then I'll raise an Ebenezer. I'll call it a “stone of help,” remembering how God has helped me thus far. It will have to be a small Ebenezer with me. Samuel would have set up a large, prominent stone. He would have hauled it there on an oxcart. I don't have an oxcart. I don't even know anybody who owns an ox. Mine will be a small stone. I think I will place it somewhere near the cotton row on Poplar Tent Road. I'll know where it is and God will know. After all, he's the one who counts!
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