I'm in my kitchen baking cornbread and homemade whole wheat rolls. I just read about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, 82 people dead. Suddenly, my world seems so far away and protected from the rest of the world.
There is evil in the world, and sometimes people submit to it and commit atrocious acts of evil, leaving a wake of destruction behind them.
Yet, as I anticipate tomorrow, I know there is also good in the world. There is family, there are friends, and there is joyous celebration.
Thanksgiving is certainly not the most existential of holidays, but in baking cornbread while reading about these people who died at the hands of evil, I am drawn to Ecclesiastes... I think, "Wow, there is a time to gather with friends and family and celebrate community around a table...and there is a time where the innocent are slaughtered." God confounds me.
It confounded Solomon too...
He writes of Thanksgiving: "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil--this is the gift of God." (Ecc. 3:12-13.)
He also writes of Mumbai: "In the place of judgment--wickedness was there, in the place of justice--wickedness was there." (Ecc. 3: 16.)
How do we celebrate tomorrow while others grieve? We just do. It is a gift to sit down with our families and friend. Eat, drink, and find satisfaction. Be encouraged that we serve a God who will judge the wicked, but now is the time to be thankful. Pray for those who are persecuted....
"God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed." (Ecc. 3:17.)
Happy Thanksgiving.
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