Thank You, Lord, For Not Killing Me

[F]or Paul, salvation does not primarily mean the end of past disaster and the forgiving cancellation of former guilt. It is . . . freedom from the power of sin, death and the divine wrath; that is to say, it is the possibility of new life.  –Ernst Kasemann

Preachers get paid the big bucks to think on such things as did Jesus have to die on the cross?  If so, why?  What happened with his death?  How do we put that in words?  

With that comes my own discomfort on the emphasis of atonement and words like justification and redemption.  Too often, these concepts (that Jesus ‘had to’ suffer the cross in order for humanity to be restored, redeemed, reclaimed, reconnected, reconciled [notice all the ‘re-’s?] to/with/for God) echo in my own mind with the sharp feminist critiques of thinking that such views somehow require God to turn to murder (if not Jesus, then it would have to be us) in order for everything to work out right.

This thinking makes (for me) the most fervent prayer: Thank You, Lord, for not killing me.  

Is that really the prayer God desires?  It seems small enough thanks to offer – the cringing plea of the undeserving supplicant grateful to be spared what she surely had coming.

Somehow this line of reasoning seems to me to combine in an artificial way The Fall (original sin) and Jesus as the curative restorative that reduces the thing ‘saved (humanity) to a thing pitiable beyond recognition.

I am a grateful woman and offer regular thanks . . . for the beauty of the world and all within it . . . for the many graces I have experienced in a lifetime on this planet . . . for the very gift of life itself . . . for each new marvel of ingenuity . . . for children and laughter and good food and quiet times and playing bridge and big thoughts and night-sky wonders and . . . and . . . and . . .

But I find that I am never grateful that God didn’t kill me as I so richly (according to some) deserve . . .

Perhaps that makes me a bad Christian.

Perhaps.

But it also makes me, perhaps coincidentally, a thankful one.

When the Lights Go Out

My cousin Mark Taylor says this looks like a grazing dinosaur

I’ve lived through lots of losses of electricity – the mid-winter ice storm in West Virginia that left us without power for a week . . . intermittent losses of no more than a day throughout a lifetime . . . the more or less scheduled daily absence of electricity interspersed with inexplicable powerless days and weeks that is Iraq . . .and most recently, the storm of last Friday that swept the central eastern United States.

Jumble of home-run wiring in Baghdad

In Iraq, such an existence is a way of life, no more remarkable than that it’s hot in July – really hot.

But in the US, we have grown so accustomed to the ready and consistent availability of electricity to the point that its absence is more than an inconvenience: it’s a threat – or at least perceived as one.

But when the lights go out, some pretty amazing things, things that make even our fears seem small . . .

Outside, the evidence of Mother Nature’s handiwork is an awesome thing, reminding us of our relative smallness in the cosmos, up close and personal.  It’s one thing to stand before the ocean or the night sky and be reminded of the vastness and power of creation . . . it’s quite another to stand beside a hundred-year-old tree, impervious to we humans below, broken or uprooted by the force of wind, while its neighbor tree remains untouched.

Inside, to feel the heat unabated by the modern wonder of air conditioning is to stand with poorer brothers and sisters around the world as well as our ancestors, surviving without the cool comfort we so enjoy and take for granted.

Lights out at dark changes our daily rhythms away from our own artificial ways back to nature’s own harmonies . . . I like that rhythm better and find I don’t need a clock to tell me when it’s daylight.

And, of course, there’s the help of neighbors.  I still don’t know who took away the debris that landed on the church, including a branch that was so big it seemed in the random photo someone took (the only way I even knew it was there) to have been a tree sprawling across the front doors.  For that and so many other acts of overt and stealth kindness, I say thank you.

For Benny for getting and storing my frozen goods in their generator-run freezer during the outage . . . for Bev and Rich for watching my cat while I was gone, when they had so many other and more pressing concerns on their plate . . . for all the neighbors that checked on each other and did what they could to help . . . for the many, many, people who have traveled away from their own homes and families to walk into these woods carrying hundreds of pounds of gear to repair lines and poles and restore power . . . for Betsy, equally at home in the most chic of locales or boiling water from the river for her family . . . for a church that doesn’t need its pastor in town to tell them to take care of each other . . . for all the acts of grace seen and unseen, I am thankful.

Thankful Hands

In my own mind, giving thanks brings to mind grace at meal time, the obligatory thank you to the holy host before impatiently digging in.  If you’ve ever been at a family Thanksgiving where the one praying seemed to go on and on and on, you’ll know what I mean.  It’s interesting to note that in the Jewish tradition, thanks are offered after the meal, not before.  Maybe if we followed that tradition, we’d be more patient with the thanks.  Maybe.

But maybe our temptation to impatience is more about not truly appreciating the cost of the meal, even in  earthly terms.  Maybe the farmers among us, whose hands have mixed with the soil that brings forth our food are more patient, more aware, more thankful.  For the farmer knows, really knows, in-his-very-cellular-structure-knows what I as a former city-dweller can only understand with my mind: bringing forth the bounty of the earth is no easy task.

At this time of year, to remind us of the debt of thanks we owe, we consider the Pilgrims and their difficult winter, saved only by the hospitality of the Natives who shared their food with them.  The Pilgrims’  thanks were heart-felt, because the food they received came as they were on the brink of starvation.  This was not just another meal in a long line of generally satisfying dinners.  No – this . . . was . . . salvation.

Jesus reminds us that he did not come for the healthy, for they have no need of him.  Rather, Jesus came for the sick.  It’s common sense, isn’t it?  Only the sick need a doctor.  Only the dying know the joy of restored life.  Only the starving know the saving grace of a meal.  Perhaps only those whose hands have been empty can really give thanks when those hands are filled.

Conversely, only the satisfied could say with poet Robert Frost, “Of apple-picking . . . . .  I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.”


It is all too easy in our place and time to grow weary of the burden of our plenty and in our weariness, to miss entirely our lack.  Thankfulness comes from the deep place within, the place where, in our smallest child-like selves, we know that what we have, who we are, is the result of grace, not merit.


It is the nature of thankfulness to recognize the gifts of others in our lives.   Thankfulness is not gladness, nor is it self-satisfaction; rather, thankfulness is full appreciation for the reality of our condition and its cause.    Maybe the real trick about thankfulness is to understand that our hands are really empty even when they seem quite full.

Paul calls the Thessalonians and us to a life of continual thanks, for God wishes us to be a thankful people.  Perhaps when it comes to thanks, the question for us is whether we can know ourselves to be starving pilgrims and desperate farmers, even when we feel like weary over-satisfied apple pickers.

Where I Live

Where I live . . .
     You can buy your eggs (fresh from the chicken) at the Post Office
     Your fried chicken (really the best around) from the gas station
     And drop off your dry cleaning at the Court House . . .                 Or the bank . . .

Where I live . . .
     Until recently . . .
     There were no stop lights . . .
     Only one blinking light in the whole county . . .
Then we got a temporary light during some bridge work . . .
     It’s so unusual, that a deputy sheriff actually had to tell someone yesterday . . .
     Yes, it’s a stop light.
     When it’s red, it means you have to stop.

Where I live . . .
     A one-finger salute by a motorist is not an insult . . .
     It’s a friendly, laconic wave to passers-by . . .

Where I live . . .
     The trees are turning color . . .
     The fawns too . . .

Where I live . . .
     Candidates for Sheriff come together to help out and judge the cooking contest . . .
     And raise money for the local Food Bank . . .
     And everybody (well, almost) wins a ribbon at the fair . . .

Where I live . . .
     People work hard, many just to get by . . .
     Enemies as well as friends help out those in need . . .
     Firefighters and Rescue Squad folk are volunteers . . .
And when you’re sick . . .
     Or dying . . .
     Or your house is burning down . . .
     You know the people carrying you . . .
     Calling out your name . . .
     Saving you and all you value . . .

I suspect it’s much the same where you live . . .
     Except, maybe, for the eggs . . . and the fried chicken . . . and the dry cleaning . . .