Keys to the Kingdom By Carolyn Tucker

I have a wild variety of Thanksgiving memories from my younger years. My Aunt Velda was a hairdresser and sometimes she would cut my hair on Thanksgiving at our house. In the late 1970s, I got a speeding ticket driving from Springfield to Stockton. I found it hard to be thankful that day. My Dad innocently threw out the dressing to the dogs before Mom baked it. (It looked like scraps to him!) One year, we ate wild turkey that had previously lived across the road. Thanksgiving was/is a time for family togetherness, home-cooked food, hugs, loud stories, laughter, and a sincere prayer of thanks to God for His goodness. I have witnessed and experienced God’s great faithfulness all my life.

Thanksgiving is a special occasion to pause and be grateful that we’re not hopeless or helpless. Even though believers can’t fully grasp what God has done for us, we can bow low, raise our hands high, and worship Him. We should humbly thank God for His mercy — for what He’s done and all He hasn’t done. Dottie Rambo penned these compelling song lyrics: “If we had gotten justice we would surely be lost. But we found mercy when we knelt at the cross.”

With all of God’s abundant goodness in our lives, let’s not be guilty of running around like Chicken Little and squawking, “The sky is falling!” That hopeless attitude makes Christians look foolish and faithless and disappoints God. When we act like God won’t keep His word to provide and protect us, we make Him out to be a liar. He needs us to be good examples and choose to trust Him. “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). We mustn’t act like silly chickens but rather thankful believers full of hope, joy, peace, and gratitude.

God is in the past, present, and future. Christ followers need not fear the future because God is already there and He’s not the least bit disturbed. Recently, I was visiting with my late sister-in-law about a certain situation. I said, “I’m not worried about it,” so then she said, “Well, if you’re not worried, then I’m not going to worry.” I believe that conversation greatly pleased our heavenly Father. “And call for help when you’re in trouble — I’ll help you, and you’ll honor Me” (Psalm 50:15 MSG). God is not limited in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, we glorify Him when we surrender and place our trust in Him. No matter where we go or what we do, God is already there with patient arms full of love, grace, and mercy. Now that’s something to squawk about!

During Thanksgiving (and everyday) let’s focus on God’s constant presence in our life. “I am a God who is everywhere and not in one place only. Do you not know that I am everywhere in heaven and on earth?“ (Jeremiah 23:23-24 TEV). If God can keep the universe in perfection motion, shouldn’t we be confident to trust Him with all our concerns? And shouldn’t we be thankful for His mercy (getting what we don’t deserve and not getting what we do deserve)?

King David wrote, “The Lord is my Strength and my [impenetrable] Shield; my heart trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him” (Psalm 28:7 AMP).

The Key: Let’s open the eyes of our heart and realize we’re blessed and be thankful.

No matter what.

No matter what our circumstances, we can trust that God is in charge.  No matter what storm we encounter, no matter what is happening in our relationships, no matter what is going on across the ocean, no matter how the world has canceled us, God is in charge.

Even if you are in Mexico and wait for five hours at Immigration and the men ahead of you are told they don’t have the right paperwork and you tap them on the shoulder and whisper to them to walk down the street to the Coca-Cola lady and she will prepare their paperwork for them (for a fee) and then you have to do the same and you end up in line behind them and they sit in the only two chairs on the sidewalk and never offer you a seat and never even thank you when they end up leaving the Immigration office an hour before you.  As a final insult, Immigration tells you to pull your hair back to take your official photo and, in your official document, you look like you have been mauled by a grizzly bear.

Even then.

Everyone I meet is dealing with something (and yes, I know, much more challenging than my Immigration story).  Two of my closest Christian friends are dealing with auto-immune diseases and three with Parkinson’s disease.  As I watch them become more debilitated, I am touched to see them lean on God and trust that He is the only One in charge.

No matter what.

This morning, I listened to a podcast by speaker/author Linda Shepherd whose 18-month- old daughter, strapped in her car seat, was thrown from a vehicle onto a freeway.”  For a year, the toddler was in a coma—referred to a “vegetative state” by 21 health care professionals– and only when her newborn baby brother was placed next to her in her bed did she awaken.  Linda spoke about what a blessing it was to care for a mentally and physically handicapped child for 26 years.  Because “God is in charge.”  In another interview, she said this: “When we are despairing, Jesus is caring.”

I’m not sure there is anything that moves me more than watching people with extreme burdens lean into God and profess that He is in charge.  They don’t blame.  They don’t ever ask “Why me?”  They don’t turn to alcohol or drugs to help them deal.  They find blessings amidst their trials.

No one did that better than Paul.  In Acts 16 we read that he and his traveling companion Silas were “severely flogged” and then thrown into prison.  Flogging was especially brutal. The usual instrument was a short whip with several single or braided leather thongs of variable lengths, in which small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied at intervals. The maximum number of blows was 39, or until the victim was considered “near death.”

We can assume these disciples were in bad shape when they were thrown into jail, their feet fastened in the stock.  What did they do?  Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God.  No moaning.  No self-pity.  Let’s pick up in verse 26:  Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake…All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! Panicked, yet understanding something supernatural had happened, the jailer asked what he needed to do to follow the same God Paul and Silas served.  In the end, the jailer and his family became Christians and were baptized.

All because, no matter what happened to these disciples, they kept the faith.

And so should we.  No matter what.