The Thanksgiving Chair (My Recliner)

My Recliner

  
We purchased it a couple of months ago, but it isn’t my first chair.  The first chair I remember loving with a deep intimate love j/k was an old rocking chair with a matching ottoman.  It was really old but had been restored and was given to me by an older couple from England whom I had recently baptized into Christ.  I loved that chair but my wife didn’t.  The second one was years later and it was overstuffed leather and it was cozy.  When I reclined in that thing it practically swallowed me up, but soon it became cracked, wore out, and ugly (at least in my wife’s opinion). 

The third one was fairly non-descript but served it’s purpose and was still all mine.  And then came the Super Bowl of Recliners, the Mack Daddy of comfortability, the mother of all recliners. It’s the perfect size, incredibly comfortable, has a couple cup holders, enough room to store my laptop or cell phone or tablet.  It has a USB port to plug my cell phone in, a back massager, and when I tip back in that thing with my electric blanket covering me, I forget that it’s stinking cold outside and I am in heaven.

Here’s the thing though, it doesn’t shield me from life.  I still have to get up to go make sure that Carter truly has wiped his butt; to play referee when my two boys are going at it; to do various chores that my wife has been waiting months for me to do and is fed up with my procrastination.  In fact in some ways it makes things more difficult because when I get in that chair all my serving skills go out the window.  I just want to relax, enjoy my chair, my TV, my computer, or whatever it is that I’m selfishly indulging in, and I have no desire to serve others.

I have another chair though that I call my Thanksgiving Chair.  It’s hard, cold, rigid, ugly, and serves one purpose only.  That purpose is to be able to see how to be thankful in every circumstance – 1 Thess. 5:18.  Notice that the verse doesn’t say be thankful about every circumstance but in every circumstance.  This (fictional) chair is with me always, it helps me to focus on what’s important.  You see celebrations and thanksgiving and bdays and anniversaries are awesome, but when I get in my Thanksgiving Chair, so are busted up lips (from falling down the stairs), and disagreements with my wife, and frustrations about the government, or things going on with the Church, or the state of poverty in America, or achy knees or bad backs.

When I’m in that chair, these things become opportunities for me to show God’s love in those situations, even to be thankful for the opportunity to bear with these aggravations and irritations and turn them into God moments.  God was still there when Job was penniless and destitute, He was still there when David was in the throes of sin, He was still there when baby Moses floated in the river, and He is definitely there in your moments of stress, hurt, fear, loss, etc.  Take time to get out of the comfortability of the recliner, take a seat in the hard unbending Thanksgiving Chair and refocus.  We are in this world but not of it.  Am I thankful for the restful moments, the fun moments, and the celebration moments? Absolutely!  But am I thankful for the other moments?  That depends on what chair I’m sitting in.

Thank you God for my Thanksgiving Chair!

In Christ, Lance

Btw I got this idea from a video clip that I found and purchased on Sermonspice.com just to be clear and not to plagiarize.  I will post the video on facebook after I use it on Sunday!