Can God set a table in the wilderness?
Psalm 78:19
Autumn is my favorite season. Those who come to my house know that during this season my table is set and my home decorated with orange, yellow, gourds, corn, leaves, and turkeys. Though it appears I overdo it, or as my husband calls it, “crazy,” the truth is the idea of a season vibrant with colors that pierce the eye (at least in Michigan) is, in fact, harkening dormancy and loss. This season of dying away is paradoxically the hilt of thanksgiving where we foster a spirit of gratefulness.
Holding the tension of loss and praise is threaded throughout the Bible. Jesus promises our lives will be troubled. (John 16:33) I love how Catherine McNeil, in her new book “All Shall Be Well,” depicts the tension by reflecting on the harvest season. She writes, “Nature wastes nothing. Nothing is ever wasted or destroyed: only transformed. All our efforts, disappointments, victories, and failures–in his Kingdom, nothing is wasted. He is taking it all, shaping it, forming us, steadfastly working toward his own harvest festival in a world made new.”
The incoming bleakness of winter’s gloom leaves memories of glorious harvest in the dust. The grey overcast skies can easily set us spiraling down the recollection of the year’s loss, failures, pains or struggles, yet even in this wilderness God still prepares a table in which we can bountifully rejoice. This is why I love Thanksgiving. It forces us to gather the joys and the pains of the year and give thanks for the transformatively balanced work of life they create together in us.
The falling of the leaves reminds me of this cyclical life we live in. In our life, experiences, people, jobs, places, things come and go, and though like each leaf they are uniquely designed, they also pass away reminding us of our finite temporariness. Though our hope, like that of the tree, is that we will bear life again, God will fill or reshape the loss, hurt, joy toward further growth and depth. The new life will look different, transformation usually does, the branches will have spread wider while the roots have burrowed deeper—sometimes slight and almost imperceptible growth, yet each phase, season, victory or loss is worthy to receive our gratefulness.
When We Wanderers Forget
The Israelites moaned in the desert in want of bread, meat, and former comforts because they felt robbed of what they remembered to be a better life left behind. Sometimes we over idealize the past forgetting how bad it was when our current life situation gets hard. They were wandering in the desert, a stagnant movement of their own making, and failed to see God reaching out for communion with them. Regardless, they were angry at God, so they poked at God, mockingly prodding, “Could he even set a table as grand as they once enjoyed in the middle of a desert?”
Why yes, he could and he did. God doesn’t give up on us, even if we are being selfish, the relationship is too important for him to lose. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time God provided for his chosen ones in the midst of their complaining or disobedience.
When life is going smoothly we think, “Wow, God is good, he must love me!” But the moment something tragic hits, we become angry or confused. “God’s doesn’t love me, how could he let this happen?” We imagine this is how God works. If we are blessed, God loves us, if we are suffering, he’s ditched us. But this fallacy is our spiritual downfall. God is with us in both, 100 percent.
We fail to see that life is a mix of the exciting and the painful. This reality is unavoidable. God wants to be in the game with us in both camps, and it looks like transforming our wilderness moments into hope and celebrating with us in the exciting times. If we are blinded by our temporary need for instant gratification, we miss out on the goodness found in the journey; the “being” in deep relationship with God through the muck and joys of life. For God it’s always about the relationship, not the circumstances for they are unavoidable in our broken reality.
Rekindle the Relationship
With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, I am compelled to challenge us to hold the tension of the good and bad that has unfolded in our lives. We can find ways to see God’s touches in life and thank him for all the ways he’s prepared and invited us to sit at his table no matter the wilderness around us.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for humankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.
Psalm 107: 8-9
Before this verse, the Israelites were still moaning. Yet the psalmist gently urges them and us to have eyes to see the bountiful table before us; that nothing is wasted, all is provided, he is near, and we are never in want when following the God of all gods, Lord of lords, King of kings. Having him in our lives is the gift. Our thankful spirit comes from knowing he cares, loves us, is devoted to us, and pursues us, and lives right by us. I don’t want you to miss out on the bountiful harvest God has for you because of complaining or failure to see the good works he’s been doing in your life even if it has been a life-wrecking kind of year. You’re invited to dine with him, let him reshape you and rekindle a loving relationship with you. You can start at the Thanksgiving table.
Next Week: Do you struggle to grow a grateful spirit? I do. So I’ll share some ways I’ve learned to lean into a spirit of thanksgiving. I hope they will encourage you as you move into the holiday season and help you find ways to reflect on God’s attentiveness to you in the mix of life. God wastes nothing when it comes to our redemption story and welcomes us to his table with open arms.
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