Thank You

The most delicate of fruits ripen early in the summer and must be consumed or preserved right away. The heartiest of fruits and vegetables are ready for harvest at the end of the growing season. These are crops that are able to last through a long winter. Try and tell me that there’s no God when everything in creation works so well together. God has made such a beautiful and bountiful earth that we cannot help but be filled with awe and wonder. And thanksgiving!

It is such an easy phrase to say, “thank you.” It was famously said by Meister Eckhart that if the only pray you say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. Yet, our prayers are often a litany of things we don’t have. Perhaps the time has come for a litany of bounty – giving thanks for that which we do have.

There is a caution however. It is time to stop thinking of the blessings we enjoy as somehow favoritism from God; that we have the things we have because God likes us more than someone who has less stuff. It just seems cruel to think that one person is blessed by God and the other cursed. Maybe we have the stuff we have because of hard work or maybe it is just dumb luck. Either way, it is clear that what concerns God is what we do with what we have.

If is true that it’s enough that our prayer contains “thank you,” then the same must be true of our actions. After all, a prayer that is not acted upon is hardly a prayer. How do we act our thankfulness? There is only one way according to the Holy Scriptures and that is by being generous. Sharing what we have with those who would otherwise go without is an act of love, an act of justice, an acted prayer. God has blessed us, all of us, with a beautiful and bountiful earth – our responsibility is distribution – with love and justice being our bottom-line.