by Keith Bassham
Years ago, I heard a former university president talk about a time from his youth when dairy products were kept in wells and springhouses. In his story, someone had used the milk, but the unnamed person did not replace the cap tightly on the milk jar, and milk had spilled into the well.
There was nothing to do but to pump the well until all traces of the whitish water were removed. Someone got a pump and went to work. A few neighbors came over to see what was going on, and before long the well pumping had turned into a block party. People were enjoying themselves, and the conversation, and the mild morning weather. Someone brought some sandwiches. Others brought drinks. It was an occasion.
And then the pump clogged and stopped.
Some of the men produced a few hand tools, and they went to work on the pump. After just a few minutes the problem was obvious to all. A snake from the well had been vacuumed along with the water up the hose into the pump. The snake had probably made the trip up from the bottom okay, but all that was left inside the pump were chunks and pieces of an ex-snake.
Or as the storyteller said, “It had lost its essential snake-ness.” It was that essential snake-ness without which it could no longer legitimately be called a snake. In this world, snakes come long and thin, and not in chunks.
Just as there is an essential snake-ness, I believe there is an essential Christian-ness — ideas, philosophies, doctrines, and behaviors essential to being a Christian. And there are scripture passages that reveal to us God’s core values, those things that are high on His list of essentials, but they do not always read the way we might expect.
Take a look at 1 Corinthians 14. There, buried in all that language about speaking in different languages and spiritual gifts, Paul describes a hypothetical situation. What if, he asks in verse 16, someone enters the assembly, and hears what is a genuine blessing of the Spirit but the person cannot understand the language of that blessing? How will that unlearned one be able to say, “Amen” (meaning, “I affirm,” or “Yes,” or “It is true”) to what Paul calls “thy giving of thanks.”
What I gather from that is that “giving of thanks” is a big part of what the church is to be doing when it assembles. By the way, the phrase translates the Greek eucharistia, from which we receive eucharist: eu – good, and charis – thanks, and is found again (in a verb form) in 1 Corinthians 11:24: “And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.” That explains how the English word eucharist came to be connected with the Lord’s Supper.
In any given church service, only a few can do some things, but we can all give thanks, and that ought to mark our worship as Christians. I would say it is an essential.
Noel Smith was sounding out this message more than 50 years ago, and his words are still appropriate today:
“Gratitude is not a spiritual or moral dessert which we may take or push away according to the whims of the moment, and in either case without material consequences. Gratitude is the very bread and meat of spiritual moral health, individually and collectively. Gratitude is not a general virtue floating around on the periphery of the personality; gratitude is central, basic, decisive. The success, continuity and climax of individuals and nations is determined by the sovereignty of God; gratitude is the determining factor with that sovereignty.
“What was the seed of disintegration that corrupted the heart of the ancient world beyond the point of Divine remedy, where God gave it up to the wallow of its filth, where men and women became foul with unnatural lusts and perversions, where not a fresh breath of purity blew through the heavy atmosphere of its stench?
“What was it but ingratitude? ‘… when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful …’ (Romans 1:21).
“What was it that blinded with pride the eyes of that young man of that far distant time, dethroned him from his seat of authority and dignity and led him a bound slave from the wealth and comforts of his father’s house to the hog pen? What was it that led him from the music of the voices of father and mother and sister and brother to the hard, cold, barren ground of the far country where only swine grunted and fugitive winds waited their distress? What was it that tore from his back his woven robe, jerked from his feet the shoes of freedom, pulled from his finger the signet of love and left his shivering form to the mercy of such tattered rags as he could find?
“What was it but ingratitude? When he knew his father he praised him not as his father, neither was he thankful. The first step of civilization toward disaster, and the first step of an individual toward disaster, are one and the same — INGRATITUDE!”
Fortunately for us humans, the step back to God begins with a thankful heart, acknowledging Him as Creator, and then as Savior. And finally, let your life be marked with thanksgiving — it really is essential.