“If we stop to think, we’ll be more thankful”
Which job would you guess is the most satisfying vocation in America? According to a researcher quoted by the Washington Post, Americans want a fulfilling job at “a place that gives them time and respects and encourages and wants them to be good citizens in their community.” As a result, those who work in “community and social services” rank highest for job satisfaction, far above categories that typically pay much higher salaries.
And among those in this top category, religious workers are the most fulfilled.
What is your “happiest place on earth”?
This should be unsurprising since Americans list religious and spiritual activities as the happiest, most meaningful, and least stressful things they do. In fact, they rank these activities some 50 percent higher than “work and work-related activities.” And they list “place of worship” as their “happiest place on earth,” while “your workplace” comes in next to last.
This latest study correlates with a volume of research demonstrating that religiousness and spirituality are consistently linked with positive indicators of well-being. Religious people are reportedly “happier and more satisfied with life than non-religious individuals” and even live longer on average.
This despite significant animosity against Christianity in Europe and the US. Tim Keller observed:
We are entering a new era in which there is not only no social benefit to being Christian, but an actual social cost. In many places, culture is becoming increasingly hostile toward faith, and beliefs in God, truth, sin, and the afterlife are disappearing in more and more people. Now, culture is producing people for whom Christianity is not only offensive, but incomprehensible.
Why are active Christians happier and more fulfilled in a secularized society that increasingly disparages our beliefs and denigrates our witness?
I asked the same question over my many trips to Cuba, where believers face far worse persecution than we encounter in the US, yet the Christians I met there were clearly more joyful than anyone else I encountered. I saw the same visiting with underground church leaders in Beijing and believers in East Malaysia and other Muslim nations.
The answer relates directly to our weeklong Thanksgiving focus on Jesus and points the way to the transcendent joy we all long to experience every day.
A star rotating 716 times per second
Researchers have discovered a neutron star in the Sagittarius constellation that rotates 716 times per second. In related news, astronomers witnessed a two-million-mile-per-hour collision between galaxies. One of the galaxies was traveling eight hundred times faster than a jet fighter. And a team of scientists recently mapped the distribution of nearly six million galaxies across eleven billion years of the universe’s history.
Who knows what lies beyond what they can see?
You and I know the answer: By Christ, “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). The prophet said of him, “His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14).
Jesus’ incarnational ministry made visible the presence of the One who measures the universe with the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12), the Creator who delights in his people (Isaiah 62:4) and redeems us in our darkest days (Isaiah 43:1).
As Phillips Brooks noted, Jesus is truly “the condescension of divinity and the exaltation of humanity.”
“Every kind of thing will be well”
All Americans have cause for gratitude this week, as President Reagan noted so eloquently:
Above all other nations of the world, America has been especially blessed and should give special thanks. We have bountiful harvests, abundant freedoms, and a strong, compassionate people. . . . Today we have more to be thankful for than our pilgrim mothers and fathers who huddled on the edge of the New World that first Thanksgiving Day could ever dream. We should be grateful not only for our blessings, but for the courage and strength of our ancestors which enable us to enjoy the lives we do today.
While Americans are truly blessed, followers of Jesus have far greater cause for gratitude. Not only are we engaged in work that brings the highest degree of satisfaction and purpose available in this world—we have the joy of knowing that “this world is not our permanent home” (Hebrews 13:14 NLT). In fact, “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” is the eternal home “God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV).
The fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich was given a “spiritual sight” into our Lord’s love for us:
I saw that he is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, for he is that love which wraps and enfolds us, embraces us and guides us, surrounds us with his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. And so in this sight I saw truly that he is everything which is good.
As a result, she assured us: “All will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.”
“If we stop to think”
I hope today’s reflections encourage you to make time this Thanksgiving week to express genuine gratitude to your Savior. As Billy Graham observed,
“Our English words thank and think come from the same word. If we’ll stop to think, we’ll be more thankful.”
Will you “stop to think” today?
Wednesday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“I have a Creator who knew all things, even before they were made—even me, his poor little child.” —St. Patrick
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