And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,

Essential Thankfulness

What is the difference between joyful service and grinding labor?

In a word thankfulness.

I grew up on a small dairy farm, so hard manual work was a part of every day to some degree or another, but some days much more so than others. I remember one cold Saturday morning in particular being dragged down to the barn by my father and handed a pitchfork. I knew what came next, we were going to pitch manure out of a large calf pen - yay! As you can imagine as a 15 year old boy on a Saturday knee deep in manure I was thrilled and my attitude was amazing, yes this is sarcasm. In reality I was in a terrible mood, but as I worked, back to back with my father pitching manure I could hear him whistling under his breath. As I remember my Dad he always had a song playing in his head as he did physical work. It was driving my nuts and I was driving him nuts with my attitude and eventually he stopped and said this to me, “You really need to learn to love work, because you will be working for the rest of your life”. Then he went back to whistling under his breath and pitching manure.

It took a long time to figure out what he really meant by that and even longer to figure out how to love work - even when I didn’t like it. To my Father life was work, and to love life was to love work. Since work occupied most of our waking hours we either loved work or hated life. My father loved his life.

But how do we love life when we do not enjoy what we are doing?

In the modern world the answer seems to be, you can’t. This is a symptom of an entitled and wealthy society. Happiness in the modern world is often pursued by getting what you want. Joy runs much deeper than this kind of happiness. Joy flows from the presence of God, and joy produces thankfulness, and thankfulness produces service. This is why Peter’s mother-in-law when she experienced healing from the presence of Jesus immediately got up and served him with joy.

The presence of God brings joy, joy brings thankfulness, thankfulness brings service.

But thankfulness is not the only possible response. Sadly we read of another response, perhaps the most common response in Romans 1.

For although they knew God,

In this passage we see that unthankfulness does much more than rob us of joy, it blinds our minds and darkens our souls. The fruit of unthankfulness leads to all kinds of evil, as Paul goes on to describe in the rest of the first chapter of Romans.

Service with Joy

But to keep this article under 10,000 words I want to focus again on the connection between thankfulness and service. After 30+ years as a missionary and missionary trainer I think I can safely say that to serve with any kind of joy absolutely requires maintaining a profound thankfulness to God and others.

Without thankfulness service immediately becomes grinding labor, which breeds resentment and self-pity, which feeds a greater unthankfulness completing the death spiral that leads to despair. That may sound overly dramatic but I can give you names of people that have gone from joyful missionaries to bitter unbelievers. And one thing they all had in common was unthankfulness. Many of these people I counted as friends and colleagues and I tell you this in great sadness.

Thankfulness is life-giving and contagious, unthankfulness is malignant, extremely contagious, and ultimately deadly.

One of my early mentors told me once, “I can only afford about 15 seconds of self-pity a week - at the most”. Truer words have never been spoken as I look back at my life. Self-pity is a self-inflicted cancer of the soul. It destroys healthy thankfulness and replaces it with a toxic self-interest that blots out the goodness of God and the joy that flows from his presence. The more we pity ourself the more pitiable we become. Resentment quickly fills the void in our soul when we forget the goodness of God. And all work becomes toil and grief as hope evaporates with our thankfulness.

But this outcome is not inevitable, thankfulness is more powerful than self-pity and it is every bit as contagious. When thankfulness fuels our efforts, love and joy can redeem even the most menial tasks. Even pitching manure on a Saturday morning can be transformed from profane to sacred space when done in the presence of God in the spirit of thankfulness. Thankfulness is our response to the grace of God. Thankfulness transforms every task into worship. Thankfulness fuels a joy that is quite separate from our immediate circumstances.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Father may I reflect your joy and grace through thankful service this week, wherever I find myself in whatever I am doing.

Have a great week!