Thanksgiving is only for the needy. You can read that in a number of ways. I don’t mean the holiday, but rather the act of giving thanks.
If any of us give thanks at all, it comes from a part of us which had a need and then had it met, or a part which carries the promise our needs will one day be met. To live without needs is to isolate and wall ourselves off from the true state of our human condition: Needy.
Or perhaps I should say “In Need”. After all “Needy” does not have the best connotation. A true definition of needy means very poor, synonymous with poverty. Then there is the idea of being a needy friend or having a needy relative. As the holidays approach, some of you are already bracing yourself for the needy cousin who cannot have a conversation without making the room his stage. With his presence he asks everyone in the room to hold him up.
No wonder we shy away from the idea of being needy. I’ve spent counseling sessions in attempts to convince people of the gift of being in need. Mostly I have failed. To often we associate neediness with humiliation and vulnerability, neither very attractive. To live in need is life on physical, emotional, and spiritual crutches, we think.
But Buechner reminds us it is a needy position the Lord took when we he humbly came for us, “Just as Jesus appeared at his birth as a helpless child that the world was free to care for or destroy, so now he appears in his resurrection as the pauper, the prisoner, the stranger: appears in every form of human need that the world is free to serve or to ignore.”
Recently family friends received a gift when they least expected it. They owed a daunting bill, and much as it humbled them, they allowed their church to know of the need. On a wall reserved for notecards specifying financial needs, they faithfully posted their circumstances. The next day, without awareness that someone had seen their notecard on the church wall, they called the billing company to determine a payment plan. The billing company informed them their balance had been reduced by thousands of dollars.
No doubt our friends will appreciate and understand Thanksgiving this Thursday.
Only to the extent we allow ourselves to be in need do we open ourselves to the opportunity for gratitude.
How might you give thanks for a need met this year?
What needs might you open yourself to that may yet be met?
