Recently, an NFL receiver who fumbled in OT to contribute to his team’s loss, stated on Twitter that he had received numerous death threats from fans.
One of his tweets was . . .
Thank you, God. Without failure there is no growth.
In order to by thankful to God for something that didn’t go
well, a person must have a healthy view of life, right? He realized that he can grow from this. He realized that the best way to practice self-care is to see failure or hardship as something meant to make us better.
Of the many wonderful quotes about self-care (out of the way-too-many self-centered ones), this is one of my favorites:
Self-care is never a selfish act — it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. – Parker Palmer
This perspective rightly takes the focus of self-care off of personal comfort and places it on other things, or, people, in this case. Yet, at least in this one sentence, it doesn’t pinpoint WHO put us on earth and WHO gave us the gifts that we have. Which brings me to this NFL player’s other tweet in direct response to the death threats:
Jesus you people need help.
We put God into some impersonal box when we can open it (“Thank you, God”) and close it (use Him as an expletive) whenever we want. Jesus is a real person, is really the Son of God, and personally died for our sins. Jesus himself asks us to believe in Him, receive the gift of eternal life that He provides through the cross, and follow Him. So, to help us keep thankfulness more personal, let’s switch that Tweet around and confess our need for HELP:
Help, you people need Jesus.
The source of true thankfulness is an admittance that we
need help, that if it wasn’t for the person we are saying “Thank You” too, we
would be in a much different place. It's true in the most basic of ways: When you say, "Thank you," to the Fed-Ex person, you are saying, "without you I would not be getting this today, so I want to give credit where credit is due." Thankfulness ought to always be personal.
If the SOURCE of our thankfulness is a heart that recognizes its need for help, the OBJECT would be the person that provides that help, the “You” of “Thank You.” Ultimately, this comes around to the maker of all good things, God. The ultimate good that God provided was His Son Jesus Christ “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2). He conquered death in our place and offered us life eternal: “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 3:36).
Let’s make Thanksgiving about thanking God, not just others or even a general, impersonal, overall “thankfulness.” Thanking God himself is the foundational and most important act of self-care, because no one cares for you more than He does. “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
