Thanks For Nothing

           Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. (Colossians 3:17)

Have you ever really watched a butterfly as it goes about its daily hunt? It flies this way and that like an aerial dog toy, ricocheting off things we can’t see in directions that make no sense. They almost land on a flower and back away several times, move to another plant, return to the first flower… and if you are very lucky, they land long enough for you to take a picture. In the process of eating, they pick up a little pollen which that might transfer to the next several flowers they visit.

Thoughts can be like butterflies. They seem to flitter around randomly from one idea to another, sometimes alighting, feeding, and picking up mental pollen that it takes to another idea, and sometimes that pollen is received and produces fruit. I like this as an illustration of those odd thoughts that seem to come from nowhere, and last night one of those butterfly thoughts landed, or maybe it was received pollen bearing fruit. I think pollen came from two sources: Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard, and a meme I saw about how thinking of food in terms of how much exercise/activity is needed to burn off the calories develops an unhealthy relationship with food. The butterfly thought that seemed to come from nowhere was, “What would a healthy relationship with food look like?”

I don’t have the answer. I’m not even sure it’s the right question. I think that the book mentioned above explores at least part of the answer to the question not only of what a healthy relationship with food, but healthy relationships with everything else looks like. And other pieces of the answer has grown from the book One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. A healthy relationship with anything involves gratitude and consciousness. Relationships with other people don’t grow because you sit in a chair and sleep or watch TV while they’re in the room. A relationship might grow as you sit with them while you both watch TV, but there’s a difference of focus there.

And that’s one of the keys of the passage I’ve used for the past two days.  You can be doing what you do in the name of Christ Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father while ignoring God because what matters is the thing you’re doing, or you can do what you do … because He’s what matters. Saying grace before or after a meal doesn’t mean much if you don’t even taste the food you’ve thanked Him for because you are too busy with doing everything else. It’s almost like saying, “Thanks for nothing.”

And if we’ve escaped the trap of saying “Thanks for nothing” about food, there’s probably something else we’re ignoring. Another example comes to mind. Every so often, I find myself astounded that one or more people at some point I the past decided that I could be trusted to get behind the wheel of a machine that can get me and stuff from one place to another, but which can also do great damage to life and property. Sometimes, I realize how great a blessing my truck is to me. I can do things like haul compost, or concrete blocks, or gardening tools in a way I would never think to do with a car. Most of the time, it’s nothing more than a means to get from here to there while “reading” the book on the CD. Would it hurt to take ten seconds when I get into the truck to really focus on my gratitude for what it is about to do for me? Or to focus on God’s keeping me from doing something harmful with it?

On the other side of things, as Dallas Willard points out, we would find it impossible to live in a fully conscious manner all the time about everything. “Now I’m going to reach to my left and pick up my FAC mug, bring it to my mouth, and take a sip of the wonderful, lukewarm café mocha. I’ll put it back down and type T H I S…” But when it comes to our attention that we’re not paying attention to something we think perhaps we should it’s time to look. And when it comes to the time of year where we think about such things, it’s time to think.