Tag: Thanksgiving

TGFI, Volume 532: Thanksgiving plus the intersection of astrophysics and Christmas

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The 19th-Cen­tu­ry Influ­encer Who Invent­ed Thanks­giv­ing (LuEl­la D’Amico, The Dis­patch): “Hale want­ed some­thing different—not in oppo­si­tion to the Fourth of July, but in addi­tion to it. She believed the nation need­ed a day cen­tered not on mil­i­tary vic­to­ry, but on home, grat­i­tude, and shared belong­ing. Again, this is why she doesn’t fit neat­ly into our ide­o­log­i­cal bins. She cham­pi­oned nation­al uni­ty, yet she believed that domes­tic life—largely women’s work in the 19th century—could mold a repub­lic just as impor­tant­ly as more pub­lic-fac­ing work. If the Fourth of July taught inde­pen­dence, Hale believed Thanks­giv­ing could teach inter­de­pen­dence: that a nation is sus­tained not only by the free­doms we fight for, but by the com­mit­ments we keep to one anoth­er around a shared table.”
    • Super inter­est­ing. Even more inter­est­ing: she wrote “Mary Had A Lit­tle Lamb” — WOW. Estab­lished Thanks­giv­ing and wrote a beloved child­hood rhyme — what an absolute leg­end!
  2. How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watch­ing: Inside the Epstein Emails (Anand Girid­haradas, New York Times): “Peo­ple are right to sense that, as the emails lay bare, there is a high­ly pri­vate mer­i­to-aris­toc­ra­cy at the inter­sec­tion of gov­ern­ment and busi­ness, lob­by­ing, phil­an­thropy, start-ups, acad­e­mia, sci­ence, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the com­mon good.… Gen­er­al­ly, you can’t read oth­er people’s emails. Pow­er­ful peo­ple have pri­vate servers, I.T. staffs, lawyers. When you get a rare glimpse into how they actu­al­ly think and view the world, what they actu­al­ly are after, heed Maya Angelou: Believe them.”
  3. A mon­u­ment to answered prayer begins to rise in a sec­u­lar­iz­ing Eng­land (Yonat Shim­ron, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Last week, Gam­ble, 56, broke ground on that vision — a 168-foot-tall archi­tec­tur­al land­mark that is expect­ed to be one of the largest Chris­t­ian mon­u­ments in Eng­land, if not the world. (Christ the Redeemer, the icon­ic stat­ue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, is 98 feet.) It is planned to open to the pub­lic in 2028. The Eter­nal Wall of Answered Prayer, with a price tag of 45 mil­lion pounds (or $59 mil­lion), will not, how­ev­er, fea­ture any famil­iar Chris­t­ian icons such a cross, a fish, a lamb or a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Jesus. Instead it will con­sist of a giant white Möbius strip stretch­ing near­ly the size of a foot­ball field, upon which a mil­lion small rec­tan­gu­lar bricks will be over­laid, each with a dig­i­tal­ly linked sto­ry of answered prayer acces­si­ble on a mobile app.”
  4. What Thanks­giv­ing Means to Me (Gar­ry Kas­parov, Per­sua­sion): “The notion of a free soci­ety is abstract. Thanks­giv­ing cel­e­brates abun­dance, and abun­dance is tan­gi­ble. You can taste it. Smell it. Hear it. The turkey and mashed pota­toes on your plate, the chat­ter with loved ones, whom you’re free to visit—these are the fruits of a free soci­ety.”
  5. The Nones Project: Well Being (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The most appar­ent result from this graph is that Chris­tians do express a demon­stra­bly high­er lev­el of life sat­is­fac­tion com­pared to the non-reli­gious in the sam­ple. On the scale from 1–7, both Catholics and Protes­tants scored an aver­age of 5.2. That’s just slight­ly above ‘some­what sat­is­fied.’ Among the nones, the group that was clear­ly the most sat­is­fied were the Nones in Name Only (NiNos) at 5.0. Slight­ly below that were the Dones at 4.85, then the SBNRs [Spir­i­tu­al But Not Reli­gious] at 4.75. The group that eas­i­ly scored the low­est of all four types were the Zeal­ous Athe­ists at 4.57.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty. Read­ing the arti­cle and look­ing at the data, I think the Dones do come off a lit­tle worse than Burge con­cludes. He does­n’t explain it in this arti­cle, but the Nones in Name Only are peo­ple who check “noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar” on sur­veys but who nonethe­less reg­u­lar­ly do reli­gious things — envi­sion some­one who comes con­sis­tent­ly to church but isn’t actu­al­ly sure if they con­sid­er them­selves Chris­t­ian.
  6. The Incar­na­tion Sheds Light on Astro­physics (Deb­o­rah Haars­ma, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “When Jesus was con­ceived in Mary, he took on atoms from her—as we all do from our mothers—and those atoms had his­to­ries stretch­ing far beyond our solar sys­tem. Those atoms assem­bled into genes to give shape to his bones and blood and into organ­ic chem­i­cals shared with all life on earth. Each cell of Jesus’ body embod­ies his love for his creation—not only humans but also the ani­mals, plants, moun­tains, and rivers often men­tioned in Scrip­ture. His very atoms once glowed in beau­ti­ful neb­u­lae and pow­er­ful super­novae in the far reach­es of space. Indeed, when God took on human form, he took on all of cre­ation.”
  7. Why Euthana­sia Feels Intu­itive (Tim Chal­lies, blog): “Because aging and death are the ulti­mate means through which we prove we have no true auton­o­my and through which we lose our inde­pen­dence, euthana­sia is a means of avoid­ing what is dif­fi­cult, humil­i­at­ing, or seem­ing­ly intol­er­a­ble. In this way, euthana­sia is a nat­ur­al or per­haps inevitable result of West­ern cul­ture.… Though this is already plen­ty trou­bling, here is some­thing that trou­bles me even more: Hav­ing been raised in this soci­ety, my instincts intu­itive­ly accept euthana­sia. I do not want oth­ers to make my deci­sions for me and I do not wish to become depen­dent upon them. In fact, I would feel a sig­nif­i­cant degree of guilt were I to need oth­ers to care for me, to be incon­ve­nienced on my behalf, or to have them put their own dreams on hold in order to ensure my pro­vi­sion. There is an abhor­rent way in which it all just makes sense, in which my instincts accept it as good, or as accept­able, at least.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Mom Con­tin­ues Long­stand­ing Tra­di­tion Of Mak­ing Cran­ber­ry Sauce For No One (Baby­lon Bee)
  • Jesus Bot Is Always on Demand (for a Small Month­ly Fee) (Jes­si­ca Grose, New York Times): “This ver­sion of Jesus looks like he stepped off the cov­er of a romance nov­el and sounds like a man­age­ment con­sul­tant. He offers the same kind of canned guid­ance that I could get from a LinkedIn hus­tle bro, with a dash of Scrip­ture and an upsell (a home screen wid­get with per­son­al­ized vers­es for just $39.99 a year!) attached.”
    • This prob­a­bly should go in the sec­tion above, but I only like to have sev­en links up there.
  • Bed­time Prayers (Pearls Before Swine):  Nov 18, 2025
  • Soul Mate (Pearls Before Swine): Nov 21, 2025
  • Thai woman found alive in cof­fin after being brought in for cre­ma­tion (Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s gen­er­al and finan­cial affairs man­ag­er, told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press on Mon­day that the 65-year-old wom­an’s broth­er drove her from the province of Phit­san­u­lok to be cre­mat­ed. He said they heard a faint knock com­ing from the cof­fin. ‘I was a bit sur­prised, so I asked them to open the cof­fin, and every­one was star­tled,’ he said. ‘I saw her open­ing her eyes slight­ly and knock­ing on the side of the cof­fin. She must have been knock­ing for quite some time.’”

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Giving Thanks is Christlike

I hope you’re on track for a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing! Paula and I are prep­ping to host a bunch of Stan­ford stu­dents who could­n’t get home for the hol­i­days.

Thanks­giv­ing is not a Chris­t­ian hol­i­day in the same way that Christ­mas is, but it is a hol­i­day that I am always delight­ed to cel­e­brate because grat­i­tude is one of the most impor­tant Chris­t­ian virtues. The phras­es “give/given/giving/gave thanks” occur 28 times in the NIV trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment. Half of those times it is Jesus Him­self giv­ing thanks, so to give thanks is Christ­like.1

So be grate­ful this week and always! This Thanks­giv­ing, I pray you feast upon delight­ful food while sur­round­ed by peo­ple you love and that the delec­table­ness of the desserts is only exceed­ed by the quan­ti­ty of the laugh­ter. May grat­i­tude fill your heart and ani­mate your mouth.

  1. Here are the four­teen times (scat­tered across ten pas­sages) the phras­es “given/gave thanks” are used in ref­er­ence to Jesus. Inter­est­ing­ly, they are all relat­ed to food.
    * Matthew 14:19 — And he direct­ed the peo­ple to sit down on the grass. Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the dis­ci­ples, and the dis­ci­ples gave them to the peo­ple.
    * Matthew 15:36 — Then he took the sev­en loaves and the fish, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke them and gave them to the dis­ci­ples, and they in turn to the peo­ple.
    * Matthew 26:26–27 — While they were eat­ing, Jesus took bread, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke it and gave it to his dis­ci­ples, say­ing, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had giv­en thanks, he gave it to them, say­ing, “Drink from it, all of you.”
    * Mark 6:41 — Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple. He also divid­ed the two fish among them all.
    * Mark 8:6–7 — He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had tak­en the sev­en loaves and giv­en thanks, he broke them and gave them to his dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute them.
    * Mark 14:22–23 — While they were eat­ing, Jesus took bread, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke it and gave it to his dis­ci­ples, say­ing, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had giv­en thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
    * Luke 9:16 — Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple.
    * Luke 22:17, 19 — After tak­ing the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you.… And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, say­ing, “This is my body giv­en for you; do this in remem­brance of me.”
    * Luke 24:30 — When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
    * John 6:23 — Then some boats from Tiberias land­ed near the place where the peo­ple had eat­en the bread after the Lord had giv­en thanks. ↩︎

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 480

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Give Thanks in the Bright Dark­ness (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It seems that, his­tor­i­cal­ly, Thanks­giv­ing was not meant to be a pure­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry day, a time to lux­u­ri­ate in self-sat­is­fac­tion, but rather a day to hold grat­i­tude in ten­sion with sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and sin—to acknowl­edge the bright­ness and dark­ness that always exist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the world.”
    • Christi­na is an alum­nus of Chi Alpha.
  2. The Con­quest of Canaan Explained in 6 Min­utes (Gavin Ortlund, YouTube). Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This is a top­ic I think I explain pret­ty well, but Ortlund does it bet­ter. Worth your time if the destruc­tion of the Canaan­ite cul­tures both­ers you.
  3. And They Began to Be Mer­ry (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dis­patch): “The mir­a­cle at Cana isn’t water becom­ing wine—any old magi­cian could do that sort of thing. What­ev­er it was that Jesus was about, it wasn’t stu­pid par­ty tricks. The mir­a­cle is that the Ruler of the Uni­verse cared about such a lit­tle thing as the social anx­i­eties of a bunch of nobod­ies in an obscure lit­tle cor­ner of the world of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his dis­pos­al, the very best?… The super­nat­ur­al stuff is one thing, but con­sid­er the mag­nif­i­cence of that ges­ture, the sheer auda­cious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cyn­i­cal athe­ist walk­ing the Earth—it is impos­si­ble not to admire the panache. He bends real­i­ty into a new shape, makes the uni­verse fol­low new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what hap­pened except for the wait­ers.”
  4. What I Wish Some­one Had Told Me About Moth­er­hood (Daniela J. Lamas, New York Times): “For my gen­er­a­tion— and, I’d argue, espe­cial­ly for women in my gen­er­a­tion — the deci­sion of whether to have a child has become high­ly fraught. It’s tied up with our desires for ful­fill­ing careers, our will­ing­ness to risk a shift in the iden­ti­ties and lives we have built. It’s tied up in an under­stand­ing of all that went into mak­ing moth­er­hood a choice that we get to make. With so much at stake, it is so easy to become par­a­lyzed by inde­ci­sion. But per­haps what I would have want­ed to hear when I was dither­ing was some­thing like this: Hav­ing a child has been extra­or­di­nary.… And for some rea­son, I feel almost embar­rassed to admit how much I love being a moth­er. I spent my adult life until now with this idea that I was dif­fer­ent from — and maybe even a lit­tle supe­ri­or to — my peers who chose to spend time build­ing their fam­i­lies. I was so wor­ried about what a child would mean for my career. But what I did not antic­i­pate was that what I would want itself would change.”
  5. This Mav­er­ick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time (Christo­pher Cald­well, New York Times): “Mr. Streeck has a clear vision of some­thing para­dox­i­cal about the neolib­er­al project: For the glob­al econ­o­my to be ‘free,’ it must be con­strained. What the pro­po­nents of neolib­er­al­ism mean by a free mar­ket is a dereg­u­lat­ed mar­ket. But get­ting to dereg­u­la­tion is trick­i­er than it looks because in free soci­eties, reg­u­la­tions are the result of people’s sov­er­eign right to make their own rules. The more demo­c­ra­t­ic the world’s soci­eties are, the more idio­syn­crat­ic they will be, and the more their eco­nom­ic rules will diverge. But that is exact­ly what busi­ness­es can­not tol­er­ate — at least not under glob­al­iza­tion. Mon­ey and goods must be able to move fric­tion­less­ly and effi­cient­ly across bor­ders. This requires a uni­form set of laws. Some­how, democ­ra­cy is going to have to give way.”
    • Cald­well is an inter­est­ing thinker, so as soon as I saw his byline I knew I had to read the arti­cle. Worth a pon­der.
  6. ‘A God Who Con­tin­u­al­ly Sur­pris­es Us’: A Q&A With a The­olo­gian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Mar­riage (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “…I would say that the way I was appeal­ing to the Bible or the way I was inter­pret­ing the Bible was too nar­row­ly focused on the few texts in Scrip­ture that do say some­thing explic­it­ly about homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. The dic­tum in Leviti­cus is that for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is an abom­i­na­tion. And those texts had a cer­tain impact on my opin­ion. But I think I was I was far too nar­row in the way I thought about how the Bible speaks to issues like this. What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some iso­lat­ed proof texts or iso­lat­ed state­ments of law, but it shows us a much big­ger pic­ture of God as a God who con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es us, con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es his peo­ple with the scope of gen­eros­i­ty and grace and mer­cy.”
    • This is one of many reveal­ing moments in this inter­view. Hays stopped believ­ing what the Bible actu­al­ly says in favor of what he takes the deep­er mes­sage of the Bible to be. It’s as though he sub­or­di­nates the real text of the Bible to the hypo­thet­i­cal text of the Bible in his head.
    • This arti­cle makes me sad. Shar­ing because it’s a clear­er-than-usu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of an argu­ment that I often encounter, and its clar­i­ty makes the weak­ness­es of the revi­sion­ist posi­tion more evi­dent.
  7. How Uni­ver­si­ties Cracked Down on Pro-Pales­tin­ian Activism (Isabelle Taft, New York Times): “Uni­ver­si­ties have seen just under 950 protest events this semes­ter so far, com­pared to 3,000 last semes­ter, accord­ing to a log at the Non­vi­o­lent Action Lab at Har­vard University’s Ash Cen­ter. About 50 peo­ple have been arrest­ed so far this school year at protests on high­er edu­ca­tion cam­pus­es, accord­ing to num­bers gath­ered by The New York Times, com­pared to over 3,000 last semes­ter. When stu­dents have protest­ed this fall, admin­is­tra­tors have often enforced — to the let­ter — new rules cre­at­ed in response to last spring’s unrest. The moves have cre­at­ed scenes that would have been hard to imag­ine pre­vi­ous­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly at uni­ver­si­ties that once cel­e­brat­ed their his­to­ry of stu­dent activism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

The Gratitude of a Preacher

As a preach­er I have a lot to be thank­ful for. First, of course, I have the sorts of things every­one should be thank­ful for. I’m thank­ful for pup­pies and kit­tens and stars. I’m thank­ful for my health and for my fam­i­ly. I’m thank­ful that I live in a peace­ful place in this war-torn and vio­lent world.

But there are some addi­tion­al things that I as a min­is­ter ought to be grate­ful for, and three are on my mind today. I am grate­ful for those I min­is­ter to, I am grate­ful for those I used to min­is­ter to, and I am grate­ful for those who make it pos­si­ble.

First, I am grate­ful for those I min­is­ter to. So often in his let­ters Paul express­es thanks to God for the peo­ple he min­is­ters to:

1 Thess 3:9 may be the most pow­er­ful of these vers­es:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the pres­ence of our God because of you? (NIV)

I can relate to Paul — the stu­dents in Chi Alpha bring me joy. Actu­al delight. Words fail me at times. And this isn’t a one-off sen­ti­ment Paul express­es:

  • 1 Cor 1:4 – “I always thank my God for you”
  • Eph 1:16 – “I have not stopped giv­ing thanks for you”
  • Col 1:3 – “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you”
  • 1 Thess 1:2 – “We always thank God for all of you”
  • 2 Thess 1:3 – “We ought always to thank God for you” (all these are from the NIV)

Paul knew that when you’re a min­is­ter, you should real­ize that the peo­ple God has giv­en you are a gift. More ful­ly, you are a gift to them and they are a gift to you.

Some­one like me should be grate­ful that any­one shows up to hear me preach. I min­is­ter to busy Stan­ford stu­dents. These peo­ple have been work­ing all week. They’ve got home­work to get done. They have text­books to read. And they’ve got cute peo­ple to woo. And they’re gonna take time every Wednes­day night to walk across cam­pus and lis­ten to me talk about the Bible? And then they’re going to find me through­out the week to ask me ques­tions about God and how to fol­low Him more ful­ly and wise­ly? That’s wild!

I am grate­ful to them, and I am grate­ful to God for them. My stu­dents are amaz­ing and I love them so much.

Sec­ond, I am grate­ful for those I min­is­tered to years ago.

In 3 John 1:4 the apos­tle tells us

I have no greater joy than to hear that my chil­dren are walk­ing in the truth. (NIV)

Paula and I recent­ly took a trip to DC, New York, and Boston to vis­it some of our alum­ni. It was so excit­ing to catch up with every­one, but one of the things that made the biggest impres­sion on me was meet­ing chil­dren who only exist because God called Paula and me to min­is­ter at Stan­ford over two decades ago. Their par­ents met in Chi Alpha, and like­ly would not have begun to date had we not pro­vid­ed the envi­ron­ment in which their rela­tion­ship grew. And now there are kids. Actu­al adorable humans of infi­nite worth who exist as a direct result of our min­istry. It’s won­der­ful.

See­ing our alum­ni filled me with inex­press­ible joy, espe­cial­ly when I spoke to so many of them about the church­es they attend and how their faith has grown through the years.

Our alum­ni are extra­or­di­nary peo­ple and I am always touched when they have time to meet with their old col­lege pas­tor, and even more when they have kind words to share and fond mem­o­ries to rem­i­nisce over.

Third, I am grate­ful for those who make it pos­si­ble.

In Philip­pi­ans 1:3–5, Paul says

3 Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. 4 When­ev­er I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, 5 for you have been my part­ners in spread­ing the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. (NLT)

Paul is so thank­ful for the Philip­pi­ans that he thanks God for them every time he prays because they are his “part­ners in spread­ing the Good News about Christ.” What that means is unclear until you come to the end of the let­ter. In Philip­pi­ans 4:15–16 he explains

15 As you know, you Philip­pi­ans were the only ones who gave me finan­cial help when I first brought you the Good News and then trav­eled on from Mace­do­nia. No oth­er church did this. 16 Even when I was in Thes­sa­loni­ca you sent help more than once.(NLT)

The Philip­pi­ans part­nered with Paul by send­ing him mon­ey to help him do min­istry. And Paul was grate­ful.

So am I. Our min­istry is only pos­si­ble because of a whole lot of peo­ple like the Philip­pi­ans. They give us finan­cial help and Paula and I are so very thank­ful.

So I’m grate­ful. And if you’re a stu­dent in Chi Alpha now, or if you were a stu­dent in Chi Alpha years ago, or if you are one of our finan­cial part­ners, know this: I am espe­cial­ly grate­ful for you this Thanks­giv­ing. May you be blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving!

At Thanks­giv­ing I often think of Cor­rie Ten Boom and her fleas. 

If you don’t know the ref­er­ence, Cor­rie and her sis­ter Bet­sie were Chris­tians who were thrown into a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp and placed in a bar­racks infest­ed with fleas. Straight­away Bet­sie said that the only way to respond to such a place was with Scrip­ture and remind­ed Cor­rie of the Bible pas­sage they had read that morn­ing from 1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5, espe­cial­ly vers­es 16–18.

Rejoice always, pray con­tin­u­al­ly, give thanks in all cir­cum­stances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thess 5:16–18

So Bet­sie led Cor­rie in prayer, giv­ing thanks that at least they were togeth­er, that they had a Bible with them, and then Bet­sie began to give thanks for the fleas which had bit­ten their legs. Cor­rie thought that was sil­ly and said, “Bet­sie, there’s no way even God could make me grate­ful for a flea.” But Bet­sie insist­ed.

Lat­er they learned that the fleas which afflict­ed them also pro­tect­ed them. The guards wouldn’t enter the bar­racks because they didn’t want to get fleas. Cor­rie real­ized that Bet­sie had been right to be thank­ful for the fleas — the fleas pre­vent­ed assaults by the guards and the fleas also gave them a mea­sure of pri­va­cy allow­ing them to lead a Bible study in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

This sto­ry and many oth­ers are told in Cor­rie Ten Boom’s book The Hid­ing Place and I high­ly rec­om­mend it to you (the sto­ry of the fleas unfolds from pages 218–231 in the edi­tion I con­sult­ed to get Cor­rie’s quote right).

Even in chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions there are occa­sions for grat­i­tude. I don’t know all you’re going through right now (I bare­ly know all I’m going through right now!) , but I’m sure there’s at least one part of your life that you wish was dif­fer­ent than it is. What­ev­er the hard­ship, I pray it pass­es quick­ly. I also pray that while it lasts God opens your heart to expe­ri­ence gen­uine grat­i­tude in the midst of it. 

May you have a delight­ful Thanks­giv­ing — and remem­ber the fleas!