C156 11/23/58
© Project Winsome Publishers, 2000

"THE THERAPY OF THANKFULNESS"
Dr. John Allan Lavender
Ex. 20:15, Phil. 4:6

A few afternoons ago, I stopped off at the home of one of my parishioners and, in the course of my call, I noticed a small plaque hanging on the living room wall. It carried a message which struck a responsive chord in my heart and sent my mind racing back across the years to a modest frame house near the base of the Oakland foothills which was my boyhood home.

Over the mantle of our living room mom had hung a similar plaque bearing the same inscription,
"Careful for nothing.
Prayerful for everything.
Thankful for anything."

That phrase -- thankful for anything -- came to mean a great deal to me in my childhood. We didn't live in abject poverty, but there were many days during the weary years of the great depression when even the sheer necessities of life were hard to come by.

I have vivid recollections of month on end when it seemed as if we had nothing but potato soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hamburger patties and milk gravy were such an uncommon treat, they remain one of my favorites. I remember the faded blue jeans which mother always ironed before she let me wear them. "They look nicer that way," she'd say. There were plenty of patches on them. In fact, there were patches on the patches. But they were clean and neat.

I remember the thick-soled, high-topped, clodhopper shoes dad insisted I wear because, as he explained, "They last longer!" It wasn't until I was a junior in high school and had a job of my own that I put on my first pair of oxford shoes. Dad's pitifully poor pay as a lay preacher just didn't provide for such "luxuries."

And yet, with it all, I have no complaints. We made out pretty well. I think those tense times brought out a resiliency which is a part of the human spirit which often does not express itself when all is going well.

There was a resourcefulness evidenced by people those days which we rarely see today. Every penny counted. Nothing was wasted. Every smidgeon of food or stitch of clothing was stretched to its maximum use.

We were thankful for anything. Not everything, because we didn't have everything! We were thankful for anything. And, as I look back upon those early years, I marvel at the way in which God so amply supplied every need, even as he promised.

Some months ago, one of my friends sent me a little clipping which contained one of the greatest meal-time prayers I've ever read. It seems there was a family much like ours who, during the great depression, feasted on beans instead of potato soup. One day little George, a three-year-old and the youngest member of the clan, came into supper after a hard day of play. When his daddy dipped some beans onto his plate, little George put a fat, chubby little hand on each side of the plate, drew it close to him, looked up at his father and said in the language of a three-year-old,
"Dood ole beans. Ain't us glad us has got 'em!"

Across the bottom of the clipping my friend had written, "I think this is sweet!" I agree. To me it is one of the greatest mealtime prayers I have ever heard. It expresses the real meaning of these beloved words,
"Careful for nothing.
Prayerful for everything.
Thankful for anything."

Someone has said the road to heaven is not strewn with roses. I've found that to be true. I've discovered that it is often lined with ragged rocks and rugged hills. But faith matures in tough and testing times, if we learn to be thankful for anything.

Actually, there is reason and room for thankfulness in every situation, if you look for it. Even in darkness, difficulty, and despair.

The New England settlers discovered that. Before they had spent a year in what they had deigned to call their promised land, the cruel winds of winter, the harsh pagans of hunger, the impersonal famine of disease had reached out and touched many of them. By springtime the number of those that lay resting in hilltop graves was larger than those who lived!

They had little to be thankful for, or so it seemed on the surface, but as one of them stood up in a town meeting and gave vent to his despondency by urging that they proclaim a fast, another old farmer whose heart and home had also been touched by disease and death, suggested that instead of glorifying their gloom they should enumerate their blessings! And they began to do just that.

They paused to thank God that --
They were permitted to participate with him in the peopling of a new world.
They were at home in a land which gave promise of health and prosperity beyond description.
They were free to worship according to the dictates of their own hearts.
And, things were not as bad as they might have been.

As they talked and testified of the goodness and mercy of God, there hearts began to sing a new song. A song of deliverance. Of courage. Of strength. Before the day was done, instead of a day of fasting they had proclaimed a day of feasting. A day of thanks giving to God for his indescribable generosity.

You see, there is a powerful healing force in the therapy of thankfulness. For the person who becomes a practitioner of thanksgiving activates within himself and around himself forces and feelings which produce a healthy and happy outlook on life.

One of the greatest preachers who ever lived was William L. Stidger. I have several of his books in my library and they are a great inspiration to me. He was, as I have said, one of the most distinctive and persuasive preachers our country has every known.

He was a character. By that I don't mean to criticize him, for to me one of the finest things you can say of a person is that he is a character. He is different from the rank and file of colorless, lifeless, listless people who become faceless in a crowd.

Bill Stidger was anything but that. He was very, very different. He was a professor of theology and therefore a tremendous scholar, and yet, with it all, he never lost the common touch. When I became familiar with his books and found them to be such a blessing, I wanted to know more about him. I discovered that, at one time, Bill Stidger had a nervous breakdown. For months he sat in abysmal gloom and mental darkness. He cared for nothing. Everything seemed hopeless and dark. But he came out of it. Do you want to know how he did it? Through the Therapy ofThankfulness.

A friend told him that, with God's help, he could bring himself out of this despondency by practicing thanksgiving. This friend suggested the way for him to go about it. "Think," he said, "of people who have greatly benefitted you in your life and ask yourself the question whether you've ever thanked them."

"Well," Stidger replied, "I can think of many right away, but I don't recall ever having thanked one of them."
"Then, select one of them and write that person an affectionate letter of thanks," his friend suggested.

Stidger gave it some thought and remembered an old school ma'rm who had been a real help to him in younger years. Her name was Miss Wendt and, as he thought about her, he remembered the gift she had of inspiring children. It was she who had given him appreciation for literature and made him a great lover of the poet. It was she who had taught him the power of simple stories as a teaching tool.

So he sat down and wrote he a letter, telling her how her influence had been a great blessing to him and he had never forgotten her. He said he wanted to thank her for what she had done for him.

Within a few weeks he received a letter written in the shaky handwriting of an aged lady. It began, "My dear Willie . . ." That, in itself, was enough to warm his heart. Here he was a half-bald, middle-aged man, fat and fifty, being addressed affectionately as "Willie."

"I can't tell you how much your note meant to me," she said. "I'm in my eighties, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and like the last leaf of fall lingering behind. You will be interested to know that I taught school for fifty years and yours is the first note of appreciation I've ever received. It came to me on a blue, cold morning and cheered me as nothing has in years."

Well, as you can imagine, that brought a ray of sunshine into Stidger's troubled mind and encouraged him to write another letter of appreciation. And then another, and then another, and then another until he had written 500 letters of thanksgiving to those who had been a blessing to him in one way or another.

In the years which followed, whenever depression began to seize him, he would take out his copies of the letters of thanks he had written to people and the little notes like Miss Wendt's that had come back in return and, as he read and re-read them, the gloom would go and the glory of God would flood his soul.

I say to you, my friend, there's tremendous healing power in the therapy of thankfulness. If you use it, it will help you handle with joy and satisfaction the hard and difficult things in life.

One of the little ladies I have the joy of serving is Miss Florence Stuerer. Florence is one of "life's unclaimed blessings" as she puts it, and yet she isn't hostile or bitter about it. As a matter of fact, she is a constant ray of sunshine. She has a wonderful sense of humor. Often, when reminded she has never been married, she says she is "monumental evidence of the stupidity of man!"

Well, through a number of circumstances including serious illness, Florence got down in one of those indigo moods which grip all of us at times. For a little while she became more conscious of her blessings than of God's power. I went to see her one afternoon. She was anything but her normal, radiant, effervescent self. It kind of caught me off guard. I didn't know what to say. So I did what I always do in circumstances like that, I started praying with my eyes wide open.

I listened to what she was saying and, at the same time carried on a conversation with the Lord, asking for guidance and wisdom as to how I might help her. After a while, and really without knowing it, I heard myself saying,
"Florence, let me tell you what to do. When you go to bed tonight read Philippians 4:6, and then 'be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanks giving, let your requests be made known unto God.' Then I want you to pray around your little world and think of everything that has happened to you today for which you can be thankful. Don't worry about yesterday or tomorrow. Just thank God for the good things which have happened to you today."

"Thank him for the fact that you can walk, that you can eat, that your digestion is good and you have a job here in this lovely home as cook and housekeeper. Don't tell the Lord any of your troubles. Don't tell him how bad you feel. Don't ask him to make you well. Just thank him for everything you can think of that is worth being thankful for. Tomorrow, morning before you get up, do it all over again. Thank him for everything you can."

The other day I received a letter from Florence. Here it is. Listen to what she has to say.
"Pastor, I went to bed that night and got to thinking about how we had Miss Howes (that's the name of the lady she works for). We have Miss Howes's blind cousin with us here. She can't see our beautiful garden and our lovely home, so I just thanked God for my eyesight.

Then I began thinking about and thanking him for other things. In the morning I did the same thing all over again. It proved to be such a blessing that I wrote out a little prayer. Every morning I stand at my sink, look out the window at our lovely garden, and I say this little prayer --
'Dear Lord, I thank thee for my eyesight to see the beauty of thy creation.
I thank thee for my ears to hear the song of the birds.
I thank thee for my mind to comprehend it all. And for my heart,
To understand and appreciate it.
Lord, I thank thee, in Jesus' name. Amen.'"

"Careful for nothing.
Prayerful for everything.
Thankful for anything."

This morning I would like to suggest that you think a good long thought about the therapy of thankfulness. I know of no quicker or more lasting cure for the debilitating disease of covetousness and discontent than an attitude of gratitude. Do you remember the old hymn? --
"When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done."

Well, there's more good sense in that little song than you're likely to find in a half dozen text books on psychology. It brings life back into focus and reminds us again of the wonderful fact that God has more than fulfilled his promise to supply all our needs.

All of us get a bit myopic about life at times. We get so heated in our hunger for more and more of the stuff we need less and less, we forget about our benefits. That's why our text is so important. The tenth commandment, "Thou shalt not covet" is really a divine call to contentment. It's a charge to be done with the feverish, furious, frenzied chase after the things of this world. It's a reminder to get busy at the real reason God has placed us here. To do his work. To glorify his Son. To build his Kingdom in the hearts of people.
I know we live in an acquisitive society. Our economic system is one in which is built upon our desire "to get ahead." It capitalizes upon our covetousness. It exploits our envy of others. It trains us to want new things long before the old things have outlived their usefulness.

"The merchants of discontent" on Madison Avenue have developed salesmanship to a fine art. They know how to persuasively play upon the strings of envy, the chords of covetousness, the blaring brass tones of human pride until, in a veritable symphony of dissatisfaction, we cry out, "I want. I want. I want!" And, not knowing what we want, we spend more and more time, energy and resources to get it.

We forget that the true function of work is not to supply our wants, but to meet our needs. And then, having done that, having taken care of our needs, work gives us the wherewithal to "lay up treasures in heaven."

The gospel of Jesus Christ comes face to face with the fact that there is within each of us a desire "to get ahead." it recognizes that the man who believes he has everything worth having is already half-dead. For him there is no sense of purpose. No reason for living. But every life must have some goal, be it large or small, or there is no rhyme or reason to it.

The Christian faith recognizes this fact. Then it goes on to challenge us to redirect this hunger "to get ahead" into channels of everlastingness.

It calls us to store up treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. To meet those needs which life and our position in life demand of us, and then to use our surplus for the things that matter most.

Christianity does not decry our desire for a better home in a better neighborhood -- provided that better home in that better neighborhood is not purchased through a misappropriation of the tithe which belongs to God -- the gospel is not against the accumulation of wealth. As a matter of fact, Christ demands that whatever a man's talent, it must be dedicated to him. If your talent is making money, that talent must be surrendered to Christ. You must make as much money as you can, so you can pour it back into the Kingdom's enterprise.

The gospel is not against money, it is simply against the scandalous and frivolous misuse of money so common today. The gospel would remind you and me to Christianize the reason for which our money is gained and the use to which our money is put.

When Jesus was on earth he declared he had come to give people life. Abundant life. Life with meaning and purpose. Life abounding with "every good and precious gift." Life with significance and deep down satisfaction.

But, he said that we can only have this life if we meet one condition. We must be careful for nothing. Prayerful for everything. Thankful for anything.

Jesus made it clear the only way to conquer covetousness is through the thankfulness. To replace our lust for life with a lust for the lost.
To re-channel our desires and drives "to get ahead" into the work of his Kingdom.
To possess, but not be possessed by, the things of life.
To never, never, never lose the next world through an excessive preoccupation with this world.

We still have our drives, but now we are no longer driven by them.
We still have our hungers, but they no longer inflame our mind.
We still have our talents, but now they are used with eternity's values in view.

Jesus declared and demonstrated that the cure for covetousness lies, not in caring less, but in caring more!
Caring more for the things that matter most.
Caring more for those about us who know real need.
Caring more for him whose incredible generosity made possible the gift of eternal life.

When you care more for these things, then, by a divine miracle, you care less for the transient stuff of time, you are cured of the cancerous curse of covetousness, and you are complete.

Oh, my friend, there is a joy to this kind of living which no mountain of material things can provide. There is a peace to this kind of living which the acquisitive, covetous, envious person never knows. There is an effervescence to this kind of living which bubbles over into everything, bringing an exuberant emancipation from the tyranny of things.

The cancer of covetousness which would strangle your soul can be cured by the therapy of thankfulness. And this therapy is activated when you grow in grace enough to say with the apostle Paul, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content -- not satisfied -- content!" And there is a difference.

The therapy of thankfulness. What wonder lies within its healing balm. Will you apply it to your own heart wounds this morning?