So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.
-G.K. Chesterton
I often say that New York is the biggest small town you will ever live in. In a city of roughly 8 million people you would think that the chances of randomly running into someone you know would be pretty unlikely, and yet it’s the sort of thing that happens to me all the time. I step on a subway train and there stands a friend that I haven’t seen in months; Walking down the street I often run into acquaintances from other parts of town, other cities and even other states. You can call it coincidence, you can call it serendipity, but to me it feels more like a plot. Why on earth with all the millions of possibilities out there should I regularly find myself in the right place at the right time? I know that I often think about the world as if it were ruled by complete chance, and yet my experience frequently proves otherwise.
Many of us have probably asked the question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” but I wonder how many of us ask “Why do good things happen to good people?” If the universe were ruled by the laws of chance and probability then one outcome would seem just as likely as the other, but if we really look closely at life we will probably find that the good things happen more frequently. Why is it then that we spend so much time talking about the bad things in life? Maybe the bad things are so noticeable to us precisely because they are a departure from the norm. Good things happen with such regularity that eventually we begin to overlook them. I’m not talking about big miracles like winning the lottery or having a baby. I’m talking about the little everyday things that we take for granted: having enough food to eat, having friends that love and care for us, or getting over the flu. These things happen so regularly that we fail to notice them until they don’t happen. If we stopped focusing on the bad things in our life, or on the things that we don’t have and instead looked to the multitude of blessings that we often ignore, how much happier would our lives be?
We are headed into the holiday season and already advertisers are bombarding us with messages reminding us of what we don’t have or trying to convince us that we need precisely what they are trying to sell. This may be a burden of the holiday season that we have to live with, but we don’t have to accept it uncritically. Thanksgiving is a perfect time to remind ourselves, on the day before the madness of the holiday rush begins, of the ways in which we are already blessed. We can give thanks, not just for the food before us, but for the many good things which we regularly overlook. We just might discover that we already have more than we need. The giving that comes as a part of the holiday season can be a true joy if the gifts are our response to the abundance of blessings in our lives and not just another chore that we “need” to do. If you look at your life closely you may just discover a multitude of little blessings, graces or “coincidences” that individually can be explained away or ignored, but collectively are far more significant. I am always intrigued when watching artists at work. Some brush strokes seem totally bizarre and pointless until the painting is finished and you realize how important that one splash of red or dot of white is to the overall painting. May we prepare for this holiday season by taking the time to give thanks for all the little good things in our lives: those little moments of grace which by the laws of chance and probability didn’t have to happen, but did anyways. Let us give thanks for all those little brush strokes that remind us, even for a moment, that there is an artist at work.
Fr. Kevin
