Thankfulness

Russians do not celebrate Thanksgiving. You may say, "of course, it's an American holiday", but they don't have any holiday similar. When I tried to explain to them the concept of thanking God, or their family, friends, etc, for what they have, they struggled to understand the purpose. So many of their holidays are about enjoyment, celebration; self-focused holidays. I found this interesting too, in light of the fact that their society is supposedly so communal. I explained Thanksgiving as a time to stop the busyness of our daily lives and consider others; consider what they have been given and what they have to be thankful for. I encouraged them to thank someone for their friendship, love, and their journal assignment for the week was to write about something they are thankful for. I have yet to read these, but I will be interested to see what they wrote. However, if I ask this of my students, I must ask it of myself as well. What am I thankful for?
I can list the typical, God, family, friends, experiences, life in general, and of course these are WONDERFUL blessings, but I could go on forever about each one. Something I’ve been thinking about recently is being thankful for the privilege of being here in Russia. It is a privilege and I need to remember that when times get rough, when I get frustrated and discouraged, God has chosen me to be His witness here. There is no blessing bigger than that!
How can be show God that I am thankful that he has chosen me to be His witness? This is the question I keep coming back to and then go back and forth between feeling purposeful, and feeling extremely insufficient. I want so badly to develop relationships that will lead to opportunities to share my faith, to begin a bible study and to show others what God has done in my life, but then worry about time and feeling prepared and what my actual role as an English teacher/missionary in Russia really is. I often struggle with trying to find the balance between being a teacher and the desire to be a friend. I’m caught between needing to be fair to all my students and not show favoritism, but also be able to invest individually in certain students.
As hard as these frustrations are, I am thankful for them. I am thankful that God does not let me linger in my indecisions and confusions, but that He convicts me and calls me to action. It may be difficult to hear that I can do better, and then to actually follow through with my goals, but unless I vocalize these things, they will continue to fester inside my head and I will live in discontentment and self-doubt.
AND, I am thankful that I have a community of people who are supporting me in my time here and are praying that I will find the courage and strength from God to do what I cannot even imagine. I do not want to become apathetic. It’s easy for me to become so overwhelmed that I end up doing nothing. I am thankful for the desire in my heart to serve but I need to realize and embrace the power that comes from God to be able to act on that desire. May I not forget to be thankful for the struggles, for when I am weak, there He is strong.

Desiring JOY

So this week I decided that I was bored of my own thoughts while standing on the metro, so I began to bring along a book, and as long as there aren’t a thousand people pressing up against me, I am able to read quite easily and without much distraction. I picked up a book I had started several years ago, Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis. It is the “intensely intimate and sincere autobiography of a man who thought his way to God” (back cover). I have become wrapped up in pondering a certain concept he talks about.
Throughout the book he takes the reader through his childhood, schooldays, his experiences in World War I, and his undergraduate life at Oxford, until he finally stepped out of his atheism back to Christianity. He has many mini “revelations” along his life journey, one of which is about his search for Joy.

That walk I now remembered. It seemed to me that I had tasted heaven then. If only such a moment could return! But what I never realized was that it had returned—that the remembering of that walk was itself a new experience of just the same kind. True, it was desire, not possession. But then what I had felt on the walk had also been itself desirable, is the fullest possession we can know on earth; or rather, because the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want and to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing.

I had to read this “revelation” several times before I think I know what he says. He writes that to desire Joy- the experience of anticipating a joyous experience- is just as wonderful as having possession of it. In other words, the very act of desiring causes one to desire it more. It causes one to remember that experience, which creates a new experience, that of possessing the desire for the experience, which is Joy.
When I use this analogy about God, the fact that I continually desire more and more of Him- I can never truly have possession of Him- brings me to that unwavering joy; that peace and deep contentment that is Joy. If I have experienced something, the desire of it again creates that experience in my head and once again I feel the Joy I felt before. In a sense, I do possess what I want.
However, there are many things that I desire that are not based on a memory and then the possession of it is more than the act of desiring it. For example, this family of mine! I was expecting a package; wanting it to come (well- in a sense though I was imagining how I would feel when I got it… hmm…) but when it did come, it was even greater than my desire for it. I was surprised by some things that were in it, and once I possessed it, my desire was fulfilled. I do not still desire the package, I have it and the joy is stronger than the joy experience in the expectation of it.
But that can also be used as an analogy for God actually- experiencing the Joy Christ brings, is greater than the expectation of it, but we won’t know the fullness until we desire it. Maybe it’s not the act of desiring that evokes the Joy, but the continual blessings, surprises and answered prayers we experience when we desire God. If we truly desire God, we will be obedient to Him, and he will bless us.
So- does C.S. Lewis write that possessing desire as Joy- only when that desire is based on remembering a good and wonderful experience? Maybe the possession is the possession of the completion of Desire, which also is found in God. When we desire God, we continue to desire Him more, and therefore, we have possessed the ultimate Joy, desiring God.