For Being
Thanksgiving
came late this year, on November 28, followed three days later by the first
Sunday of Advent. The “holiday season”
has arrived in full force: black Friday, cyber Monday, and giving Tuesday. I will delight to attend concerts, receptions,
and parties—but before I plunge into Christmas, I want to reflect on
Thanksgiving.
Sarah and I
hosted children, grandchildren and in-laws from both sides of our newly blended
family. It warmed my heart to see
Rebekah and Rachel generously give time to their much younger cousins Jakobi
and Tristan. The family played games,
took walks, watched Netflix, and sat with the dog. Mostly we talked and ate (probably too much).
Before our
feast, of course, we gave thanks. As
host, I led the family in prayer. I
prayed our thanks for health and material blessings, but I also gave thanks for
greater goods. The first was being.
In Acts 17,
Paul told the Athenian philosophers that God should not be thought as an object
of wood, stone or metal, made by some craftsman. He quoted the Cretan poet Epimenides: “In him
[God] we live and move and have our being.”
(Side note:
Paul did not hesitate to quote pagan voices when he could use them to preach
Christian doctrine. A liberal education
in literature, music, philosophy, and other arts is a good thing.)
More than
forty years ago, my college roommate Ron Mock said he was astonished and
grateful for existence. In contrast to
fictional characters or hypothetical creatures, God had made a world in which
he, Ron Mock, actually existed. Over the
decades since then, I have come to appreciate the deep insight of his remark.
Consider
fictional characters. I’ve written some
novels, so far two have even been published.
My plan for retirement, when it comes, is to produce more fiction. As a result, my mental world is populated by
made-up people: Eleanor Roosevelt Urquhart, Debbie Apple, Danys the Prince of
the Sea, Marty Cedarborne, and many others.
On one hand, I invented them. On
another, I’ve sometimes had the sense that my characters were calling me: “Come
back to the keyboard; finish our story”—as if they were independent agents.
“As if”;
that’s the point. Fictional characters
aren’t real, not even those we love best, not even if we model our lives on
their courage, faith, or love. In
comparison with Beowulf or Frodo we may think our lives are pedestrian. We don’t go on great quests, we don’t solve
intricate mysteries, and we don’t wrestle with colossal temptations.
We don’t cross land and sea to prove our loves.
But we are real. The world we live in is not merely possible;
it’s actual.
(In modal logic philosophers often
use the language of “possible worlds” to explicate concepts of necessity,
impossibility, and contingency. Necessary
propositions are true in every possible world; impossible propositions are
false in every possible world; and contingent propositions are true in some
worlds and false in others. We have no
reason to think that any of the possible worlds are real, with one exception:
our world.)
For all we know, God created other
worlds than this one. So it’s possible,
in the mere sense that it is not self-contradictory, that Danys the Prince of
the Sea exists in some world. Of course,
we who live in this world have no reason to think Danys is real. Contrariwise, we know that we are real.
From a Christian perspective, what
a privilege! God, the uncreated eternal
Being, has given being to us. We are.
Jesus, the incarnate God, is the
center of cosmic history. He is the logos, the rational principle, the Word,
the truth, the light. His is the true
story. All the other stories must be
judged in the light of his story. And we get to be part of his story. We are the persons he came to save, and if we
are believers, he entrusts to us the proclamation of good news.
Therefore I also gave thanks, as
our family waited to dig into the feast, for the story of Christ: for his
birth, yes, but especially for his death and resurrection. We give thanks for hope.
We all die. Sarah and I have experienced death of our
spouses. Before we married, we
acknowledged an unwelcome truth, that one or the other of us will go through it
all over again. One of us will have to
live and grieve. We know by experience
that death is real.
Nevertheless, we hope. We are part of Jesus’ story, and we look
forward to Resurrection Day. So on
Thanksgiving, we thank God for Advent.
