A New Thanksgiving.

Though miles away from the states, Rebekah and I faithfully celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday. We laughed as we thought of our present circumstances…literally being a couple of “pilgrims” among Indians on Thanksgiving (in the truest sense).

Due to the complete absence of turkeys in South India, we contemplated eating a chicken for Thanksgiving, but the violent and bloody steps that proceeded in order to get the chicken into its edible form kept us from following through. Instead of attempting to create the beloved traditional foods of Thanksgiving—mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and yams—we took a bold venture to attempt cooking a South Indian meal (with the help of several friends).

After explaining the history and heart of Thanksgiving Day to the Pastor Paulose’s family, they were thrilled to support and host the meal at their home. They had already been planning a celebratory church gathering, which happened to fall perfectly in time with Thanksgiving. Around forty people showed up and, sitting on grass mats, we enjoyed rice, lamb curry, vegetable sambhar, and a spread of other delicious Indian dishes (of course, we let someone else handle the whole meat task). Rebekah and I attempted to add a bit of American flair to the meal by making apple pie and peanut butter pie for desert. Serving frozen peanut butter pie to a crowd who rarely eats such rich sweets—or anything frozen for that matter—was nothing short of comical. In a culture where silverware is void, it was hilarious to watch hesitant older Indian women attempting to lift a piece of frozen pie with their fingers and dangle it above their mouth. “Woops, I didn’t even think about the fork factor,” Rebekah whispered. We held our breath until everyone had finished—pie all over their faces and endless smiles emerging. Almost at once the Indian women started shouting things at Rebekah and I in Tamil. “They really liked the desert!” the pastor’s wife explained laughing.

Just before we ate our meal together, all forty-something of us gathered in a seated huddle and sang several Tamil worship songs—our voices raising high to magnify our awesome and faithful God—who is, “the only one worthy of [our] praise, the only one who has done mighty miracles that [we] have seen with our own eyes” (Duet. 10:21). I sat there, legs criss-crossed and my head in my lap. Reflective memories of the previous three days alone were enough to fill my heart and spirit with an overwhelming gratefulness and a sheer joy that seemed to be breaking forth within me. The three days prior to Thanksgiving—the sights, the interactions, and the miracles I saw with my own eyes— filled me with such a renewed sense of the power of our God that I was rendered not only to a place of absolute gratitude and thankfulness, but a place where I was filled with a new wonder that seemed to push the frontiers of my faith and exceed the edges of my human imagination. A place that I believe will only expound as I continue to live with a hunger to see more. I found myself sitting there so filled with thankfulness that I serve a God who daily wants to reveal himself to me. A truth that has far less to do with the fact that I am being exposed to the miraculous in India, and much more to do with the fact that God will continually make Himself fully available to those who have an insatiable desire for Him—regardless of where they are living.

I adore the way Frank Laubach explains this faith phenomenon in his own life in Letters by a Modern Mystic:

“To be able to look backward and say, ‘This has been the finest year of my life’—that is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, ‘The present year can and shall be better!”—that is more glorious!

If we said such things about our own achievements, we would be consummate egotists. But, if we are speaking of God’s kindness, and we speak truly, we are but grateful. And this is what I do witness. I have done nothing but open windows—God has done all the rest. There have been few if any conspicuous achievements. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences in the friendship of God. It was the lonesomest year, in some ways the hardest year of my life, but the most gloriously full of voices from heaven.”

Contemplative, I sat thinking on these words, embodied on Thanksgiving as I, too, found myself filled with a gratitude for the best year of my life because of God’s kindness. From last Thanksgiving spent at a decorative table in the presence of physical abundance and family, to this Thanksgiving spent on grass mats, eating with my hands, also in the presence of my family—one that has little to do with geography and everything to do with commonness of heart.

I thought of the miracles I saw just days before—a young woman supernaturally healed of stomach pain, a throng of villagers surrendering their lives to Christ for the first time, the beauty of the faith of individuals who have close to nothing in this world. All reasons enough to fill me with an unquenchable gratitude. I thought also of the darkness I have experienced this year—times of confusion and questioning, times of pain and mental suffering, times where “the bottom has completely fell out”. Experiences where Jesus had to remind me yet again that I needed to die—to come to the end of myself—to recall that I no longer live, but that He lives within me. Reflective of those times, I also found unquenchable gratitude—perhaps even greater gratitude than in the times of rejoicing, because it has been those times where I have seen Christ most clearly, experienced His love most fully, and found the greatest depths of freedom.

And so I move forward with prospects of another glorious year. A year of high expectations that I know will be fulfilled because of the ever-present, faithful, adventurous friendship of Christ Himself. A year of pressing open windows and leaving the rest to God.