Gratitude in the Midst of Grief
Cornucopia.
I remember struggling to sound out this tricky word in a Thanksgiving themed spelling test as a third grader. It’s that curved cone looking thing, also commonly called the “horn of plenty”—the quintessential Thanksgiving centerpiece filled with fake fruits and veggies. Though my third grade class took this spelling test dressed up as paper bag clad Pilgrims and Native Americans for our “Thanksgiving Feast,” we were taught that versions of Thanksgiving are celebrated all over the world during harvest time. Many cultures set aside a day to give thanks for the “plenty” and “abundance” of the yield from the benevolent God who nourished the seeds through rain and sunshine.
But for many of us, the window cling promptings to “Give Thanks!” for abundance and fullness have the opposite effect, exacerbating the emptiness we feel. Empty homes that we thought would be filled with children. Empty wombs that once held dearly loved babies whose cries were never heard. Empty arms that long to cradle and lift children lost to tragedy and disease. Empty chairs that mark the absence of husbands, siblings, grandparents, parents, or friends whose voices we long to hear, whose hands we long to hold. Some of us feel this lack in the empty silence of a table webbed with strained relationships, eyes emptied of all their tears from being far away from home, hearts emptied of feeling—made cold from bitter disappointment. For some of us this emptiness is material, scarcity on our plates reflecting rapidly emptying bank accounts.
Harvest time doesn’t always yield plenty; at least not in a visible or material sense. My Bible reading plan recently led me through the book of Joel—in it, the people of Israel lose their harvest to swarms of Locusts for four consecutive years. Death and destruction in the place of abundance, over and over. It’s a depressing read, really. But then God speaks: “The Lord answered and said to his people, ‘Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied...I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten’” (Joel 2:19, 25). For Israel, God was promising to end this specific famine literally. But his spiritual promise to those of us who place our faith in Christ is the same. He has promised to redeem and restore the years we have lost to the evil one and his awful plagues of pain, death, sorrow, and grief. And this is our cause for thanksgiving, even when all we feel is emptiness.
In times when we sit down to what we thought would be a bountiful feast, only to behold all that the locusts have eaten, we remember another table. The table on which Christ, the night that he was betrayed, served bread and wine, representing his body, broken for us and his blood, shed for us. The next day, he drank the cup of God’s wrath, so that we could say with the psalmist, even as we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” still, “my cup overflows” as we sit at the table he prepares before us in the presence of our enemies (Ps. 23:4-5).
My dear sister, this Thanksgiving, as the rest of the world seems to be celebrating abundance, whether you pull up a seat to an empty table, with empty arms, in an empty house, with an empty bank account, or an empty womb, I pray that you would “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps.34:8). Even in the midst of all the brokenness and ruins of what the locusts have eaten, I pray that you will be moved to rejoice in what is imperishable and undefiled, the inheritance that Christ has secured for you in glory, where God will restore what the locusts have eaten.[1] You will be seated as a guest at a table set with a bountiful feast—one that will not spoil—the marriage supper of the Lamb.
But even as we wait for that feast, we should keep the feast Christ served his followers, communing with our Savior in gratitude for all that he has given us that can never be taken away, namely, himself. For the believer, gratitude has a place even, and perhaps especially, in grief. In our pain, we can praise God all the more for his character and control—knowing he is completely sovereign, completely good, and therefore, completely trustworthy. We can thank God for his commitment to our good and for his covenant faithfulness—knowing that the spiritual fruit of suffering and his promise of redemption cannot be threatened by evil or locusts. And we can praise him for his comfort and care, as he keeps us and ministers to us through members of his body and with his Spirit.
We can give thanks in grief, because even when all of the gifts are taken away, we still have the Giver. Feeling our lack offers us a unique opportunity to praise God as we only can earthside, in our pain and poverty. But it also gives us the gift of praising him as we only ever will in the New Heavens and the New Earth, for who he is, and not just what he gives.
As you drink the bitter cup of disappointment, sorrow, or pain this Thanksgiving, taste and see that the Lord is good as you recall his character and control, his commitment and his covenant faithfulness, and his comfort and care. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps. 136:1).
[1] 1 Peter 1:4
