“I am thankful to be a Christian because …”

An entry in the Thanks­giv­ing Group Writ­ing Project spon­sored by On the Hori­zon, The Next Step, and A Proverbs 31 Wanna Be Woman.

On this Thanks­giv­ing, like all oth­ers, it is appro­pri­ate to focus on the things in our lives for which we are grate­ful. There’s no doubt about it: I am a very blessed woman. In par­tic­u­lar, I feel blessed to be a per­son of faith because that is what sus­tains me from day to day.

Many peo­ple write and speak about “the moment I accepted Jesus Christ as my per­sonal Sav­ior” or “the day I was saved.” They tell sto­ries of a life that was devoid of belief in some­thing big­ger than them­selves, lack­ing focus, and with­out mean­ing until a spe­cific point in time when they under­went a life-changing con­ver­sion expe­ri­ence. I love hear­ing those sto­ries. I find them fas­ci­nat­ing because I can­not relate. Those folks’ expe­ri­ences are com­pletely dif­fer­ent than my own.

I was born into a Chris­t­ian fam­ily. Although my father was not raised in a home where faith was prac­ticed (I don’t know any­thing about his par­ents’ beliefs), he was bap­tized and con­firmed into the Lutheran church as an adult when he mar­ried my mother. She, like my sis­ter and me, was bap­tized as an infant, grew up attend­ing Sun­day School and wor­ship ser­vices reg­u­larly, and was con­firmed into church mem­ber­ship as an ado­les­cent. Both of my par­ents remained mem­bers of the church until their deaths. In my mother’s case, despite the rav­ages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease which stole her mem­o­ries of the peo­ple she cared for, she could recite the Lord’s Prayer and Apos­tles’ Creed, and sing many of her favorite hymns and Christ­mas car­ols with­out stum­bling over a sin­gle syl­la­ble. It was a tes­ta­ment, accord­ing to our doc­tor and then-pastors, to how deeply embed­ded in her soul and spirit those words were.

I do not believe that being a Chris­t­ian makes me bet­ter than any­one else, nor do I believe that I have “a lock” on some­thing that is not read­ily avail­able to every­one else — the peace that passes under­stand­ing. On the con­trary, the older I get, the less I know and the more ques­tions I have. The more I read the Bible, the more I appre­ci­ate that it is a divinely-inspired work, but given that it was writ­ten by imper­fect human beings and has been trans­lated repeat­edly, I accept its mes­sage through the power of the Holy Spirit rather than my abil­ity to read and com­pre­hend its mean­ings on my own. I nei­ther con­demn nor attempt to con­vert any­one who does not share my beliefs because I believe that the best “adver­tis­ing” is lead­ing a life that is con­sis­tent with and exem­pli­fies one’s beliefs.

I am thank­ful that I am a Chris­t­ian because I sim­ply do not know how to be any­thing else. I know that isn’t a very pro­found response, but it is an hon­est one.

Dur­ing a Bible study, the leader once asked the group mem­bers to write on index cards what prayer was like to them. For­tu­nately, the answers were pro­vided anony­mously because, at that time in my life, I would have had a hard time stand­ing up and say­ing, “Prayer is like breath­ing.” But that was the answer he read aloud from my card. My prayers are like my breath­ing: Instinc­tual. Auto­matic. Ingrained. Habit­ual. Absolutely nec­es­sary to my sur­vival. Required to sus­tain life.

Con­sis­tent with the over­rid­ing prin­ci­ples of Chris­tian­ity, I do not believe that there is any­thing I could pos­si­bly do to deserve the bless­ings in my life. I have no answer to the ques­tion of why some peo­ple in this world have so much while oth­ers have so lit­tle. I can only trust that all truths and ratio­nales will be revealed eventually.

Rather, the good things that come to me and define who I am are gifts from the Tri­une God and exem­plify the bound­less, lim­it­less and unend­ing love that is freely bestowed upon each of us. So it is “right and good” to peri­od­i­cally stop and spend some time med­i­tat­ing on those peo­ple and things, how they enrich my life, and why I am so very thank­ful for them. That’s what I will be doing tomor­row. I hope you will spend some time with your loved ones, relax­ing and reflect­ing upon all of the pos­i­tive aspects of your life.

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