Give Thanks - Learning from Others

– from Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A dare to live fully right where you are. Among many threads of thought in this book is one in which she traces out the uses of the Greek verb eucharisteo – “to give thanks.” It is the root of the word “Eucharist” – another name for the Lord’s Supper, because Jesus gave thanks when he took the bread.

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“And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them…” (Luke 22:19 NIV).

                …I thumb, run my finger across the pages of the heavy and thick books bound. I read it slowly. In the original language, “he gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo.”

I underline it on the page. Can it lay a sure foundation under a life? Offer the fullest life?

The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning “grace.” Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks.

                But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning “joy.” Joy. Ah… yes. I might be needing me some of that…

…Was this the clue to the quest of all most important? Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo – the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long… wondering… is it that simple?

                Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

                So then as long as thanks is possible … I think this through. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible…

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We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.

                Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.

                Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole fullest life.

                “If the church is in Christ, its initial act is always an act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God,” writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. If I am truly in Christ, mustn’t my initial act, too, always be an act of thanksgiving, returning to Jesus with thanks on the lips?

…Thanksgiving – giving thanks in everything – prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.

                The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God – even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion – this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him. At the Eucharist, Christ breaks His heart to heal ours – Christ, the complete accomplishment of our salvation. And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives. Thanksgiving – giving thanks in everything – is what prepares the way for salvation’s whole restoration. Our salvation in Christ is real, yet the completeness of that salvation is not fully realized in a life until the life realizes the need to give thanks. In everything?

                I would never experience the fullness of my salvation until I expressed the fullness of my thanks every day, and eucharisteo is elemental to living the saved life.

                …All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no. Was it because I had never fully experienced the whole of my salvation? Had never lived out the fullest expression of my salvation in Christ? Because I wasn’t taking everything in my life and returning to Jesus, falling at His feet and thanking Him. I sit still, blinded. This is why I sat all those years in church but my soul holes had never fully healed.

                Eucharisteo, the Greek word with the hard meaning and the harder meaning to live – This is the only way from empty to full.