Choose to live a life of gratitude, joy
About a year ago I found a line in the middle of a chapter in that Old Testament behemoth, Deuteronomy. It was one of those leap-from-the-page stunners.
Moses — who led them out from slavery in Egypt — is speaking to the Israelites, whose stubbornness has them stuck wandering the desert for four decades. If they or their offspring are going to make it through this grueling trek to the fertile land God promised they must have some rules. God has given them specific directions but, of course, they have the choice to “do or not to do.”
It is a huge choice. It determines their trajectory. If they choose wrongly, it will not go well — and this is where that sentence pounced: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart for the abundance of all things …”
These people were in a “dry and thirsty land.” They were homeless. There were undoubtedly sandstorms. They wandered sometimes by day, sometimes by night. I can't see where “joy and gladness” would even fit. More like dull endurance. And where is this “abundance of all things” in a desert environment? That metaphor is used to describe a place of barrenness in life.
Toward the end of this book of Deuteronomy, Moses summons the people and says, “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt … I have led you 40 years in the wilderness; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.” Besides this they were fed with “bread from heaven” — manna — a nutritious flake-like substance they gathered from the ground each morning. In the evening the “quails came up and covered the camp” — and they had meat. God provided them with water.
They may not have had luxuries, but they had what they needed. They had each other. They were no longer enslaved. Back in Egypt their lives had been made “bitter with hard labor.” The Egyptians became afraid of an uprising because the Israelites had “increased greatly.” They ordered the midwives to put to death the male babies — hence the story of the infant Moses and his rescue in a wicker basket from the banks of the Nile River.
As unlikely as it might seem, the Israelites did have abundance in the desert. They had the presence of God guiding them, providing for and protecting them, teaching them to know Him, to love and follow Him and to love each other. Miraculously, that band of ragtag wanderers millennia ago is still a nation today.
I believe it's as true now as it was then — there is the choice to live a life of gratitude, searching out the “abundance of all things.” There is the choice to know and serve God, to acknowledge Him for the abundance He provides. There is the choice to offer thanksgiving with joy and a glad heart.
Psalm 100 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name. For the Lord is good.” To know this — to do this — makes Thanksgiving in the desert or the fertile field a true feast.