REMEMBERING TO GIVE THANKS

Introduce the importance of taking time to remember God's gifts by asking youth whether they have accepted their lives as a gift? There are many aspects of this giftedness. One concrete way of becoming mindful of it and more amazed by it is to reflect upon all of the things that had to happen in order for each of our lives to be conceived. We cannot chart all of the minor incidents that seemed of no consequence to our ancestors as they happened. My own conception was not planned. My mother neglected to check whether her diaphragm was free of holes on evening and voila! When I think about the competition that I faced in that first race toward conception, I give pause to reflect upon how my life could have been someone else's life. I often share the story my Grandmother told of how her father returned from the shippingline office in the winter of 1903 proclaiming that he had exchanged the family's tickets in steerage for passage on another ship at a great savings. One quarter of my genetic material sailed on the S.S. Canada instead of on the Titanic where it surely would have gone down to a watery grace.

The giftedness of life should not be reduced to a series of chances. It took many acts of faith for my birth to occur. Ancestors stringing back further than any genealogical records raised families, uprooted themselves to seek a better future, preserved my religious heritage and passed it on. As Stanley Hauerwas notes in his work A Community of Character (p. 68-69), scripture is the gift of our spiritual ancestors, who remembered their stories and fashioned a canon and preserved it for us.

Have youth read 1 Cor 4:7
"What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?" (1 Cor 4:7)

Also read Psalm 139:

Remembering God in the story of my life:

The following exercise is designed to help youth intentionally reflect upon times in their life when they can acknowledge that life is a gift.

Find a place to be comfortable:
Begin with a prayer of appreciation.
Take a journey through your memory beginning with your earliest recollections.
As you go, make a list of the events and experiences (10 or so) that have been gifts.
Pray over each one for God to make clear how he has been present in these experiences and events and express your gratitude by giving thanks.

Vows

In the Protestant tradition, we have few formal ways or practices for giving thanks. We tend to treat a prayer of thanks as sufficient. By examining the biblical and orthodox traditions of vows, I encourage youth to explore and experiment with other ways of expressing thanks.

Note: Vows are not the same thing as an Oath. These are clearly distinct acts in the Bible, Early Judaism and early Christianity. Sometimes people used similar terms in the formation of a vow or oath or they sealed a vow with an oath by calling upon God to witness to their promise and affixing a curse to it as a consequence of its violation. The only confusion is in the modern era.

One of the most significant vows of the Old Testament occurs in 1 Samuel when Hannah promises to devote her child to God as a Nazarite if God gifts her with this child:

She made this vow: "O LORD of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head." 1 Samuel 1:11

The commandments governing the Nazarite vow appear in Numbers 6:3.

The apostle Paul seems to undertake something like a Nazarite vow (Acts 18:18; see also 21:23).

Vows of abstinence seem not to be uncommon in early Christianity. Paul acknowledges that married couples of the Corinthian community took mutual vows of abstinence from marital relationships from time to time (1 Cor 7:5).

In later Christianity, people took monastic vows and priestly vows dedicating themselves to contemplative lives or lives of poverty and abstinence.

A common and frequent practice in many Christian traditions is to take a vow in acknowledgment of God's gifts of healing or prosperity. A person would fast in thanksgiving or devote a piece of property in thanks.

In some Hispanic cultures, individuals will nail small metal or wax symbols called milagro (miracles) to holy sites when they have completed their vow. If you have a same of milagro bring them to class. If not, print out a picture from an on-line source.

Carlos Santana has called his charitable organization the Milagro Foundation. He gives thanks to God by giving a portion of his ticket sales to an organization that helps provide opportunities to children.

Youth in my church often react negatively to the tradition of the milagro because they link it quickly with superstition, especially if the vow occurs, as does Hannah's, before the divine gift. Spend some time making sure that students do not paint too simplistic a picture of other people's faith. Encourage them to think of concrete things that they can do that they feel are in accord with their faith to demonstrate their gratefulness to God. Have students identify benchmarks in their near future and to link about ways that they can remember God and show gratitude when they reach them.

Benchmark prompts: