Thanks for Storms That I Have Weathered

Thanking God not only for the good, but also for the bad.

Although perhaps not as well known as “We Gather Together” or “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come,” the Swedish song “Thanks to God” has become one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns in recent years. The lyrics are as follows:

1. Thanks to God for my Redeemer,
Thanks for all Thou dost provide!
Thanks for times now but a mem’ry,
Thanks for Jesus by my side!
Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,
Thanks for dark and stormy fall!
Thanks for tears by now forgotten,
Thanks for peace within my soul!

2. Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,
Thanks for what Thou dost deny!
Thanks for storms that I have weathered,
Thanks for all Thou dost supply!
Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,
Thanks for comfort in despair!
Thanks for grace that none can measure,
Thanks for love beyond compare!

3. Thanks for roses by the wayside,
Thanks for thorns their stems contain!
Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,
Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain!
Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,
Thanks for heav’nly peace with Thee!
Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,
Thanks through all eternity!

Thanksgiving is a time when I often begin reflecting over the past year, the high points and low points, the good times and bad. I recently looked back in my journal at the first entry of the year and laughed, for I mentioned that I didn’t think much would change this year. To my surprise, I had a year of tumultuous change sprinkled with a fair amount of injustice, betrayal, and rejection.

I’m not going to lie: it’s downright hard to be thankful for those difficult things.

But that’s exactly what the hymn “Thanks to God” does best. It expresses thanksgiving not only for joy, but for sorrow, for the thorns on the roses, for the storms weathered and the tears shed. It takes the good and bad that life offers and receives both as gifts from God.

“How can the bad be a gift?” many of us would rightly wonder. The answer to that question is given by Elisabeth Elliot, the widow of famed missionary martyr Jim Elliot, in her book These Strange Ashes. “This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart,” Elliot wrote, “I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me.”

In essence, those hard times, those difficulties, those betrayals, rejections, and disappointments are all gifts from God, packages designed to draw us to Himself and make us more like Him in the process, usable and refined to go out and do greater work for Him.

As we head into the final stretch of yet another year of political turmoil and cultural upheaval, we can use this Thanksgiving to sit back and grumble about how hard life has become. Or we can use Thanksgiving to thank God for the difficulties, offer them back to Him in gratitude, and then wait with eager expectation to see how He will use these difficulties to transform our character and provide ways for future, unexpected blessings.

—

Flickr-Patrick Emerson, CC BY-ND 2.0