Do you want cream with your coffee?

 

Most times when ordering coffee you’ll be asked, “Do you want cream with your coffee?” My answer sometimes surprises me, “No thanks. Well, yes, please.” Then I laugh and say something like, “I think it depends on the day.”

That same phrase came out in another conversation recently, but without the laughter. A gentleman traveling through Hovland stopped in at Trinity Lutheran. We chatted, and then he said, “What does this really mean—‘offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving’— can you tell me?”

The words of my first thought (“yes, I can answer that, we have so much to be thankful for”) wouldn’t come out of my mouth. The man had been telling the story of the tragedy taking him home to Canada. “Well…” I started to reply; and then paused for several moments.

Part of what was taking place in my pondering was the man’s own story. Part of what was taking place was the morning news reports of Malaysia, Nepal, South Korea, tornadoes in the United States. Part was recalling my recent trip to Haiti, where in the midst of resilient people and beginning recovery from the earthquake four years ago, there is still immense devastation.

The gentleman I had met asked a deeply questioning question, with no easy answer. Finally I quietly said, “Perhaps it depends on the days we are living through.”

There are those horrible times when, as Psalm 116 in the Bible says “the cords of death entangle” when we “come to grief and sorrow.” There are times when we are held captive by disaster or aloneness or fear. There times when we want to cry out, “Awake, O Lord! Why are you sleeping?” Psalm 44.

And even those who do not have faith, who may state there is no such thing as a god, cry out as do people of faith: “How long? How long?” Psalms 35, 13, 79.

The gentleman was asking the same hard questions of God as have generations upon generations.

We are only a few days past our Christian celebration of The Resurrection of our Lord on Easter Sunday. But to get to that celebration, we had to pass through the time of remembering the anguish of Jesus, dying on the cross, also crying out, “Why have you forsaken me?”

Those words help us know we too can cry out in our anguish. They can help us know we do not need to offer thanksgiving to God for the sorrows and struggles. God doesn’t expect us to be able to turn horror into a silver lining.

What does “Offer unto God, the sacrifice of thanksgiving” mean?

For me, at least for now, I find this: When the days bring gentle sunrise over calm waters with light colors in the sky, I thank God for the beauty of creation and for life itself with the gift to humanity that we can consider the sunrise and see the calm and recognize beauty in the colors.

And when the days bring my good friend facing death, or people I love in Haiti facing still more agony, or a ferry capsizing—I offer in the midst of my sorrow a sacrifice to God. I ask the Holy Spirit of God to help me remember and still say, “Thank you for life itself. Thank you for the gift of recognizing the beauty of life. Thank you for my friend. Thank you for people who let me see that in the midst of despair or in the midst of ease, they offer thanksgiving to you.

“Thank you for letting me know that we are precious in your sight, that you, O God, anguish with us, that we are not alone. Amen.”

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hovland.