students of jesus

Sometimes thankfulness is difficult because we are so angry we’re not God. I’ve never told him directly, but I think God is aware: I’m after his job.

Perhaps before we examine the cosmic example we can see this idea in operation at elementary school. Yesterday I told my daughter this was a short week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. “Isn’t that great, Sweetie?” I said. “You get three days off from school this week!” Her response tells the story in miniature: “Why don’t we get four?”

Or five? Or while we’re at it, why not take off from Thanksgiving to Christmas? My daughter would say, “It works for me.”

This is an elementary school version of what C.S. Lewis described as turning away from the good offered because we are searching for the good we imagined. Take a moment and listen to Lewis:

One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or a setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.

Lewis goes on to suggest that deep joy is found when we dive into the wave God sends us, instead of resisting that wave while looking for another. Anything else is fighting the ocean itself.

Ask Yourself: Can I remember a moment when I missed the good God sent because I had in mind another good?

Live Into It: It’s a surprisingly strong habit: we stand in judgment of the good we receive because we would prefer to rule the world ourselves. Although we may never say it so bluntly, we want to be our own god. Why not surrender your crown to the true king?