This week's Theme: Grateful
Day 1: Raise me up
“Is this the airport stop?” he asked, looking around. No one seemed to pay any attention. “Is this the airport stop?” he repeated querulously, his challenging gaze resting on me, two seats down from where he slumped, heavily installed in the first seat.
“I believe so,” I tentatively responded, vaguely recalling the word “airport” from the garbled announcement over the intercom. He struggled to get up, pressing his weight onto the walker he had used to board the train a few minutes earlier.
I had watched him then, hunched over, leaning heavily on the walker, his steps painful and slow. It had taken him quite a while to reach the open seat next to my friend and me, and even longer before he managed to sit down.
He was tall, and the apparent stiffness and/or pain in his lower body seemed to make it difficult for him to sit. More than five minutes had gone by before he was finally in the seat. And now he needed to get up out of it.
“Do you need help?” I ventured, laying my belongings on my seat and approaching him. “Yes, help me get up from here.” I reached out my hands and grabbed the gnarly fingers, noticing the bruises and sores.
The walker was between us. I grabbed hold and tried to lift him, but he seemed to have no strength or willingness to help me. “Don’t you even know how to lift someone?” he snarled at me, his eyes piercing, the scraggly grey beard lifted accusingly towards me.
“I’m sorry—I don’t.” I responded. At that point, a young man across from us intervened and offered help. By now the train had come to a complete stop. “He’ll never make it off on time,” I thought. I positioned myself at the doors, vainly struggling to hold them open, all the while trying to be mindful of safety.
“It’s OK.” The voice came from behind me. The dozer in the pilot’s uniform had now entered into the mini “crisis.” “The airport is the next stop, not this one.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. By the time the train stopped again, the man was safely in the exit area, and made it off the train with time to spare. Except for the biting criticism directed to me, I don’t think he had breathed another word in response to any of the efforts to help him.
“Ingratitude is stronger than traitors’ arms.” I almost laughed out loud as the old remonstration from my mother’s stockpile sauntered into my mind. It was her favorite to kindle guilt when we did not fulfill what she considered an obligation— (Caribbean parents!) And she unfailingly attributed the quotation to some long-ago politician far outside our youthful purview.
I thought wryly that traitors’ arms or not, everything was apparently stronger than my arms! Later, as I reflected on the blatant ingratitude of the curmudgeonly traveler, I was struck with the thought, What about other kinds of ingratitude? The subtler instances? In our own lives?
The times for instance, when we find ourselves immediately pouncing on a perceived “deficiency” in a multitude of benefits? The times when we miss the present blessings as we churn and worry over future problems?
No wonder Scripture—Old Testament and new—constantly guides us away from grumbling, and criticizing and complaining, and into a mindset of intentional gratitude:
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation” (Philippians 4:14-15).
Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever (Psalm 136:26).
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Ingratitude and entitlement are indeed deceptive, strong, and treacherous. They are easy to spot as you and I look out over the world. But I wonder how many times we have snarled at God, “Don’t you even know how to lift someone?” even as His loving arms reached across insurmountable barriers and obstacles to raise you up, to raise me up.
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