Thankfulness on Deposit

So….I’m supposed to take a deep breath, count my many blessings, and feel thankful, right?  But what if I don’t?  What if I’ve just lost a loved one or a job or a friend, and my heart aches...or is numb?  What then?  Do I just put on my plastic smile and pretend?

Mary, Joseph and Jesus were celebrating Passover, certainly a kind of Thanksgiving as they remembered their deliverance from their oppressors.  But if they had been feeling thankful, it was quickly lost under the “great distress” of trying to find a twelve-year-old son who had other plans than a trip home.

I marvel at much in this passage: the simultaneous hunger and wisdom of this twelve-year-old Jesus. The amazement of the crowds that must surely have strained to hear the conversation.  But I ache with Mary and Joseph at their exchange over his extraordinary disappearance.  “Your father and I have been searching for you.” “Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?”

This must surely have been a moment of pain for this son’s mother and step-father.  Oddly, the very deliverance they had anticipated in their Passover celebration is standing in front of them, taking one more clear step on the road to his destiny. Yet I doubt his response invoked immediate feelings of thankfulness on the part of his parents.

But here is what I find most moving. The Scripture tells us that Mary’s response to this distressing moment is precisely the same one she had when the shepherds had come crowding into a stable so many years earlier.  She “treasured up all these things.” 

And here, I submit, is a key from Mary on the Thanksgivings when the right “feelings” are eluding me.  I can place thanksgiving on deposit.  I “treasure up” my questions, my journey-in-progress, my losses along the way, and I hold them close as something precious in the process of a re-creation I cannot fathom in this particular moment…but will understand, likely with gratitude, someday.  For this same son whispers to Mary and to me what he will one day shout: “Behold, I make all things new.”