THIS VERSE LIFTS us: “always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” (Eph. 5:20). This verse gives the spiritual climate of being in Christ. In His name we give thanks always for everything. The climate is thanksgiving. Is this rhetoric or reality? It is reality.
In Christ, you are in One who made something out of everything that happened. He could and did give thanks always for everything, for everything was opportunity to Him. He turned his interruptions into interpretations, His oppositions into opportunities, His Calvary into an Easter morning. He didn’t bear trouble, He used it. Everything furthered Him.
I walked in meditation under a great banyan tree in an Indian garden. I paused to examine a root reaching down from one of the branches, reaching toward its mother, the earth. Someone had facetiously tied the end of the root into a knot and tucked in the end so it could not reach further toward the earth. It was blocked in its progress. No, the root put out three smaller roots from the knotted root and they were on their way down below the knot. Circumstances may tie you in knots, but the life of Christ in you will put forth fresh roots even from your knots. Strangely enough, your very knots untie you—give you a fresh start.
Amy Wilson Carmichael, a saintly missionary who suffered for eighteen long years, had as her life text: “Blessed is he who is offended by nothing in Me”—one who takes no offense with any of My dealings with him. This is beautiful, but this verse goes further—it says positively that we are to give thanks always for everything. The secret of doing this is the portion which says, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We give thanks in His name, for His dear sake. That makes everything not only bearable, but usable. He redeems everything and makes it contribute.
O Jesus my Lord, Thou art Lord of everything that happens. In Thy hands everything is fruitful—pain, frustration, failure. Thou dost turn everything into Everything. So give me the dancing, thankful heart. In Thy name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my thanksgivings turn into thanks livings—I become what I’m thankful for.
