Thanks Giving

How many times have we prompted our kids with, “And what do you say?” You can make them say, “Thanks,” but how do you teach kids gratitude? In Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is a good example of what thanksgiving really is. Desperate and out of work, he lands in jail for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. Nineteen years later he is released. The injustice of his penalty changed him. “Hatred was his only weapon, and he resolved to sharpen it in prison and carry it with him when he left.” Though free he was still bound by the “yellow ticket” that declared to everyone he was a “convict” and “a very dangerous man.” Scorned, hated or feared by everyone he met, he again found himself with no job or food in his stomach.

Then he encountered a kindly old bishop who not only gave him food and a bed, but treated him with dignity. Still, in the blackness of his heart, Jean Valjean stole the priest’s silver utensils and fled.

The police saw him on the run and brought him back to the bishop who dismissed their accusations and confirmed Valjean’s story—he had given the silver to him as a gift. “But this time,” the bishop told Valjean, “you must not forget your candlesticks.”

Jean Valjean was freed by an unsolicited act of profound generosity. The bishop sent him on his way, urging him to use the money to make himself an honest man. “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

We might assume Valjean’s natural response would be a simple thank you. After all, we say “thanks” to a kindness shown and consider our debt paid. For many the Thanksgiving holiday is a season for self-indulgence followed by an extended avalanche of media induced material madness. Keep it coming and we continue thankful.

But Jean Valjean’s response is far from automatic. He realized the consequence of accepting the bishop’s gift with thanksgiving. His “black thoughts” collided with the pure goodness of the priest. The words of the priest “constantly returned to him and he sought to suppress them with arrogance, which in all of us is the stronghold of evil.”

The gift was given, but he had to decide whether to receive it. To reject it would send him plummeting on a path to depravity. To accept it would demand a wholesale surrender to a life of unselfish service. Valjean saw in his mind the bishop and Jean Valjean. The confused internal turbulence did not recede until “the bishop grew and gained splendour in his eyes, while Jean Valjean shrank and faded. A moment came when Valjean was no more than a shadow, and then he vanished entirely. The bishop alone remained, flooding that unhappy soul with radiance.”

While we give thanks for our physical blessings next Thursday, let’s remember God, like the bishop, has given a gift—unsolicited, unexpected, undeserved. Jesus provides freedom and deliverance from our “yellow ticket,” the burd ening conviction of our sin. The gift calls from us more than a simple, “Thanks.” It requires us to acknowledge, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Jesus told the parable of the servant with a huge debt that his master forgave. That servant, however, was unmercifully hard on another servant that owed him a minuscule amount. The point was that no one can receive and enjoy God’s abounding grace unless he allows it to transform his heart, his actions and his relationships (Matt. 18:23-35).

Jean Valjean could find no peace, could not enjoy the benefits of the bishop’s gift, until he forfeited his heart to God’s goodness. Selfishness and malice must give way to kindness and forgiveness. Joy comes through grateful surrender. Only when we fade and disappear and Jesus alone remains in us may our unhappy souls be flooded with his radiance. For that we give thanks.