Let us pray: O God shape our lives that they may be receptive to the guidance of your spirit. Shape my words that they may be transformed into words that are yours. Amen.

As is usually the case every week, the readings for this Thanksgiving Sunday give much to consider. We live in a muddled world. It sometimes seems that anything we think or do could be followed by a “but on the other hand”. At least that's the message I seemed to be getting this week as we approached thanksgiving. Even that statement itself adds to the muddle. As we approached Thanksgiving. Do we really need to approach thanksgiving? Leonard Burks doesn't think so. He wrote the song that gives title to this reflection:

The song is in the style of an African-American spiritual. Have you ever noticed how those songs, coming out of an experience of slavery and oppression offer such a hopeful view? It's pure gospel to take a situation that offers so little hope and sing about it with unbounded faith. The same sort of thing happens in our reading form the Hebrew Bible this morning. The prophet Joel writes about the years of plague when locusts ravaged the earth and destroyed the crops, but counters it with a similar kind of hopeful message – you will be full of fine food, you'll sing praises to God. Hope in the face of hardship. More pure gospel.

Do you see what I mean? The better things are for us, the less likely it seems that we will look for the good. That's the muddle to which I referred earlier. A similar kind of thing happens with our reading from the gospel today. Jesus is obviously frustrated with an over active concern about appearances and fashions. As we heard, he points out that the flowers of the field are beautiful and the birds of the air are free without worrying a bit, without sitting in front of the mirror or spending time going through the travel brochures.

And yet, it wouldn't take long sitting with this in front of us before we would start to worry, not about ourselves but about those people who cannot be sure of where their next meal will come from and where they are going to find enough clothes to wear. In the face of all this muddle, in the contradictions and turmoil of living I'm sure there are times when we might indeed wish to be like the flowers and the birds – just looking good and flying free without having to worry.

What to do?

The letter writer had an answer: “The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.” Even here, there's the contradiction of “do” versus “should”. I have to admit, that's not what I do. Public prayer excepted. It's part of the job description that people like me get asked to pray in public. But a personal prayer life is much less of a habit. It's not that I don't agree with Timothy's correspondent – the power of prayer, the wisdom of prayer, the value of prayer have all been proven to me. But it's kind of like that reflection on thanksgiving that I mentioned a few moments ago. We don't spend every day counting our blessings, thus leading us to the need to sum them all up in a special holiday – Thanksgiving Sunday. It's important to have the special day, but if you are like me, you need to be reminded that every day is indeed a day to give thanks. And if you are like me, you need to be reminded to make prayer a regular part of your day, rather than just when times are difficult or unsure.

It is pure gospel that we so often learn to hope from those whose situation seems most hopeless. It is pure gospel that when we are properly reminded that we worry too much, we turn our thoughts to others. It is pure gospel to be called to pray every day in every way. Gospel is good news and what news could be better than hearing a word of hope in unexpected situations. What news could be better than to turn our concern from thinking about ourselves to thinking about others. What news could be better than to turn towards God more intentionally – which of course is what prayer invites us to do.

Gospel – good news is not just heard, it is lived. Gospel is also about grace. God does not focus on the “shoulds”. God instead invites us to move forward. And that's the ultimate “on the other hand”. The wonder of grace is that we are always empowered to start fresh. Every day from now on can be a day of thanksgiving. Every day from now on can be a day occupied less with worrying about ourselves and what we will do and occupied more with living the gospel in the world, where wrongs are righted, where justice rolls down like an ever flowing stream and where we spend our lives more intentionally in relationship with God through prayer both spoken and heard.

Thanks be to God for grace and gospel, for inspiration and insight, for courage and compassion. Amen.