Give Thanks for All?

My sermon last week was based on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, which says, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

On Monday while contemplating giving thanks in all circumstances, I thought about Emily. Her spinal column thinks she has a brain tumor, which she doesn’t, and is sending fluid to her brain. This of course causes tremendous pressure.The pressure became so unbearable that Emily could not eat or sleep. She had pain and nausea. Sleep is often the only release from great pain and discomfort, but even that release was not given to her. At one point she felt like dying, not that she was suicidal, just that death seemed the only release from her suffering. Thankfully a spinal tap has provided some relief, although the medication she is on leaves her drained and needing abundant sleep.

I was thinking about her on Monday in regard to these verses. Then for some reason I got sick myself. I had an extreme headache and nausea, and ended up vomiting twice. I hate to vomit. I know no one loves to, but someone like Roger looks at it like a relief to make you feel better. I resist it until it is unavoidable. So the next day, I was trying to figure out how you give thanks for vomiting. I lost some weight, which is welcome, but I still wasn’t excited about vomiting. I prayed a lot for Emily, feeling in sympathy for her, although her suffering has been much worse, which was a good thing that I was reminded to pray for her and for Don who has also been in great pain, and also vomited this week trying to take pain medication.

Then I remembered that horses can’t vomit. They have no regurgitation reflex. Most animals have a survival instinct that causes them to eat whenever possible, just in case they don’t get fed again. A dog will overeat when it finds a treasure of food, and if it is too much, it vomits it up. Our dog Sunny got some chocolate lately, and she vomited it up, because chocolate is poison to dogs. So that reflex got the poison out of her system. Horses cannot vomit, so if they get into the feed storage and eat a whole can of food, instead of vomiting, they become terribly uncomfortable, often roll on the ground in their attempt to feel better, twist their intestines, and die. Yes, horses can die from overeating because they cannot vomit.

Besides the regurgitation reflex when we are physically sick, sometimes we need to excise some spiritual poison. Sometimes that poison is a grief we are carrying, and the only way to be delivered is to grieve, cry, yell, whatever it takes to allow the grief to escape, instead of allowing it to fester and poison our whole system. Certainly sin needs to be vomited, as well as guilt or shame. Whatever we are holding on to needs to come out.

One method of ridding our systems of poison is to praise. When we give thanks in all circumstances, and begin to pray continually, we will soon found ourselves being joyful always.

So give it up!