Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. —Psalm 100:4-5
I know. It’s not Christmas yet and we’ve already started celebrating—and I don’t mean putting up Christmas lights and pre-Black Friday sales. As Thanksgiving is late this year, it leaves less time to plan for Christmas. Because the first week of Advent falls on Thanksgiving weekend, our women’s ministries decided to schedule our Advent by Candlelight event a week earlier. Yes, we dared to celebrate Advent before Thanksgiving.
It was a blessing! At first most people reacted to this change with concern, but once they looked at their calendars it seemed to be the perfect timing. We laughed because we know God’s timing is always perfect.
Advent by Candlelight is an evening for women to enjoy dessert, music, and friendship around specially decorated, hosted tables, and be touched by personal stories of inspiration. This year for Advent our congregation will celebrate with devotions written by our staff about What to Expect When you are Expecting—no, not a baby…
What does all of this have to do with Thanksgiving? Everything.
We tend to be grateful for all that we have and for all of the prayers God answers to our liking. When our expectations are met, we are thankful. But what happens when our expectations are not met? When we sit around the Thanksgiving table and share stories of gratitude, we don’t usually mention things like loss, illness, loneliness, and a lot of real life, hard-to-face issues.
The stories shared at our women’s Advent celebration were not all happy stories, at least not in the beginning. A lot of our stories include sadness or confusion. But in the darkness of these real life scenarios God’s light shone brightly on the hope we all cling to through the waiting. Every story told that evening ultimately resulted in blessings (or blessings in the making). It’s the same hope we seek (as the world had) as we wait in hopeful anticipation for the promised coming of our Savior who will be born on Christmas Day. This is Advent.
“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” —Romans 8:24-25
Q: How can we be grateful this Thanksgiving when we don’t know the timing, result, or outcome of that for which we have prayed—when illnesses aren’t ending in healing, relationships aren’t ending in reconciliation, or life has simply taken a hard left turn when we needed it to go right.
A: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” —Hebrews 11:1
When we don’t get what we’ve prayed for, we often get discouraged. It’s hard to wait, it’s difficult to be grateful for unanswered prayers. But think back on some of your unanswered prayers. Do you see the blessing of God’s timing? Not all outcomes feel like a blessing. We don’t always know why things happen the way they do. But if we hope, if we have that peace which surpasses all understanding, God will reveal Himself in a most glorious way.
We declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.—1 Cor 2:7
This Thanksgiving, I pray that you see the blessings in unanswered prayers and hope in in the waiting.
