Thanksgiving Day
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
Thanksgiving is not about entitlement.
Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
Keeping Faith In A Rich Land
For the wandering Israelites, looking over the threshold into the promised land, the question is this: Can they keep their austere, desert faith in a land of rich vineyards and olive groves? Will they continue to remember the one from whose hand they have received all these benefits? There is a twofold commandment here: "You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land..." (v. 10). Eat and bless -- many, in our materialistic culture, stop at the first part and never get to the second. "Prosperity gospel" preachers croon, "Go ahead, eat your fill," but often neglect to finish the sentence. The way in which we are to "bless the Lord" is detailed in the verses that follow: in short, we are to keep the commandments (v. 11). Verses 14-16 summarize the story of the Exodus from Egypt; if future generations of Israelites will but remember that story, it will keep them focused on the most important spiritual values. There is no such thing as a "self-made" man or woman: We may be tempted to say, "We did it," but the real truth is God has done it all (verses 17-18).
New Testament Lesson
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Sow Bountifully, Receive Bountifully
Harvest is the dominant metaphor in these verses from 2 Corinthians. And where does the harvest come from? It comes from the sowing of seed. Anyone in an agricultural society knows that seed must be sown generously in order to produce. The packet of seeds we bring home from the store always seems to contain far more than is necessary. Yet, nature requires an excess of input in order to yield a generous output. In life, we must sow bountifully, in order to reap bountifully (v. 6). Verse 7 -- "God loves a cheerful giver" -- is, of course, a wonderful stewardship text in that it gets beyond the mere mathematics of giving, delving into the motivation beneath. In the church, giving that honors God is giving that arises out of generosity of heart. Contrary to folk wisdom, it is most definitely not "the bottom line" that ought to concern us -- but whether our giving comes from "the bottom of our hearts." Where does all this seed come from in the first place? It comes from God, of course (v. 10). It's all God's to begin with. We just give something back, in a continual exchange, a reciprocal flow. Not that this is an equal exchange, a quid pro quo -- for God's gift is so vast as to be "indescribable" (v. 15). It is God who has ordained that we should live this way, giving as well as receiving.
The Gospel
Luke 17:11-19
The Ten Lepers
This story is frequently misinterpreted as a simple fable about remembering to say "thank you." Although Emily Post (along with the greeting-card industry) would approve of this interpretation, the story is about far more than that. While it's true that the tenth leper, a Samaritan, returns and thanks Jesus, the more important feature is that social taboos render him unable to respond as the others do, by "showing himself to the priests" (v. 14). The priests would have refused to bless this man since he is still a member of an outcast group -- no longer a leper, but still a Samaritan. Verse 14 also says, "as they went, they were made clean." Notably, the nine are people of great faith, because they set out on this arduous journey with no certainty -- other than Jesus' promise -- that they will in fact be healed. Before their healing, the ten were a dismal brotherhood: Their disease united them across cultural lines. Once their skin cleared up, though, the old differences emerged. The Samaritan was healed, walking along the road with the others, but he then realized he could not return with them to the Jewish priests. Not knowing what else to do, he turned back and prostrated himself before Jesus. Jesus' benediction -- "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well" (v. 19) -- declares that the Lord can work outside the intricate system of ritual law. This is good news for Gentile Christians in Luke's day.
Preaching Possibilities
A certain credit card company ran a television commercial a few years back. It began by showing a rescue helicopter circling a deserted, tropical island. A column of smoke rises from a bonfire on the beach. A distress message is spelled out in coconut shells: "SOS."
In the next scene, the helicopter has landed, and the crew has rushed over to help an apparently unconscious man, lying face-up on the beach. No sooner do they reach him than he leaps up, with a huge grin on his face. The man's wife pops out of some jungle foliage nearby, holding a camera. She's jumping up and down with excitement. "I got the picture!" she seems to be saying.
In the next scene, an announcer informs us the credit card company's running a contest in which the prize is "your own private island." The implication is: It's your island, so you can do whatever you want -- including, presumably, calling in false alarms to the local search-and-rescue people for your own amusement.
It was just a commercial gimmick, of course. The ad agency didn't expect us to take their little drama seriously. But they really did know what they're doing, psychologically, in running that ad. Their approach was shrewd. They were hoping to entice us, the consumers, to enter their contest and become their customers. They were trying to lure us in with the fantasy of entitlement: "It's your island, do whatever you want."
Entitlement is much in the news these days. When the politicians in Washington talk of "entitlements," they mean programs like Social Security and Medicare. These are programs we, as taxpayers, have paid into over the course of many years. When we retire, we quite naturally feel entitled to the benefits for which we've paid.
We all know there are problems with the funding for these programs. Sometime in the next couple of decades, we're going reach the point where more money is flowing out of these funds than is flowing in. If something's not done before then, we'll have a whole lot of angry, entitled people!
Here in this Thanksgiving worship service, it's not so much the politics of entitlement programs that ought to be our focus, as the whole notion of entitlement itself as a theological idea. What does the Bible have to say about entitlement? Is there anything to which God says we're entitled?
Not if you read the book of Deuteronomy. The passage we read is addressed to the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness. These are a desperate, destitute people -- former slaves, all. The Israelites own nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever meager possessions they can carry. Poor as these people are, they have one thing that is of infinite value. They have God's promise to guide them into a land of milk and honey.
In Deuteronomy, chapter 6, Moses makes it absolutely clear that the chosen people, upon entering the promised land, are not to feel entitled to anything:
"When the Lord your God has brought you into the land, [Moses tells them]... a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant -- and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."
-- Deuteronomy 6:10-12
"These things will be yours," the Lord is saying to the Israelites, "but not because you deserve them. They will be yours because I give them of my own free will (and for no other reason)." Is our situation any different here in America, the new promised land?
The pilgrims of Plymouth didn't think so. At the time of the first Thanksgiving feast, they had just come through many months of hunger and privation. More members of their original company had been buried in the ground than walked upright. Yet even so, gratitude to God swelled their hearts; not because they felt entitled to the food they now had in abundance, but because they felt incredibly blessed just to be alive.
We used to have a healthier appreciation of who we are and what we truly deserve, here in America -- and not so long ago as the seventeenth century, either. As recently as 1906, our President, Theodore Roosevelt -- himself a member of our nation's wealthy elite -- demanded that Congress pass a steeply graduated inheritance tax. This made him highly unpopular among his fellow patricians, who feared and loathed an inheritance tax more than anything else. An inheritance tax, which would take some of their vast, accumulated wealth and distribute it for the common good, threatened their sense of entitlement.
But Teddy Roosevelt didn't care. For him, it was a moral issue. Here's what he said: "If ever our people become so sordid as to feel that all that counts is moneyed prosperity, ignoble well-being, effortless ease and comfort, then this nation shall perish, as it will deserve to perish, from the earth." Wealth, he declared, should only be "the foundation on which to build the real life, the life of spiritual and moral effort and achievement."
Roosevelt's efforts met with no immediate success. But he used "the bully pulpit" of the presidency -- ol' T.R. invented that term -- in such a way as to keep the moral issues of wealth and inheritance before the American people. Eight years after Teddy Roosevelt left office, in 1916, Congress finally established an inheritance tax. (Susan Dunn, "Teddy Roosevelt Betrayed," New York Times, August 9, 1999)
Fast-forward to the present day. The whole idea of a graduated inheritance tax -- one that applies disproportionately to the wealthiest Americans, and unapologetically so -- continues to come under periodic attack. This happens because our national sense of entitlement has grown beyond all proportion. We have come so far from the starvation days of the Plymouth colony, and even from the tycoons of the Gilded Age, that we can scarcely remember the lessons our ancestors taught. Will Teddy Roosevelt's words prove prophetic -- his warning that a nation that becomes so enamored of wealth and entitlement "shall perish, as it will deserve to perish, from the earth"? Let's hope not. Yet, it's clear that we are on the wrong road, as a people. Unless we rediscover that message of Moses to the Israelites -- that we are entitled to nothing in this land of milk and honey, that everything is a gift beyond our deserving, for which we can only feel gratitude -- we just may be in for a rude awakening.
On Thanksgiving, may we learn to set our sense of entitlement aside. May we discover the abundant joy that comes from true, heartfelt gratitude!
Prayer For The Day
Great Lord, our God,
we acknowledge that love began with you,
and has filled our cup to overflowing.
Surrounded as we are
by the abundant wealth of this great land,
give us the grace to be properly thankful:
and to exercise the gifts and talents you have given
to fill others' lives with love.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
To Illustrate
"Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty." (letter from Edward Winslow of the Plymouth Colony describing the first Thanksgiving, first published in 1622; chapter 6 of Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth)
These are not the words of a man who feels proud of his possessions, who believes he's entitled to them. They are the words of a devout and grateful Christian believer, who knows that, in this promised land called America, every crop his people gather in, every animal they hunt for food, is a gift of the Almighty.
***
In Daniel Defoe's famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, when the title character finds himself washed up on a desert island, the first thing he does is make a list. It's a list of all the pros and cons of his situation. On one side of his list he writes: I do not have any clothes. On the other side he writes: But it's warm and I don't really need any. On one side: All the provisions were lost. On the other side: But there's plenty of fresh fruit and water on the island. And on down the list he goes.
The longer his list of pros and cons becomes, the more Crusoe comes to discover that his situation is not so desperate as all that. For every problem, there is a corresponding blessing.
There comes a time, later in the novel, when this castaway nearly does give in to despair. But then he finds consolation in the scriptures:
"One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, 'I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' Immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?
'Well then,' said I, 'if God does not forsake me, what matters it, though the world should all forsake me?...' From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable that I should ever have been in any other state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place."
***
Entitlement is the enemy of gratitude, and our culture is awash in entitlement. We live in this nation as if we had it all coming to us, as if we believed our own advertising.... We cannot say simultaneously, "Thank you" and "I had it coming to me," unless we talk out of both sides of our mouths. If we assume we have nothing for which to be thankful, and no one to whom we should be grateful, giving thanks is superfluous, unnecessary, and certainly uncalled-for. The result is life without gratitude, which is life where joy has gone missing.
-- Tim Hart-Andersen, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, from a sermon, "Recovery of Gratitude," preached at the 2004 Presbyterian Church (USA) Stewardship Network Gathering
***
Every day is my best day; this is my life; I'm not going to have this moment again.
-- Bernie Siegel
***
There's a Buddhist story about a monk who was walking through a field when he is confronted by a fierce tiger. The monk backed away, knowing that just beyond him was a cliff and just below that cliff was the sea. The monk was caught between the beast and sea, and so he chose to lower himself over the cliff on a thick vine. As he did so, he was filled with gratitude that the vine could hold him. After his prayer, the monk looked over and saw, growing through the rock on the cliff, a spindly vine with leaves and one bright, red strawberry. He looked up to see the tiger snarling at him and looked down to see the waves leaping and lurching below him. Then the monk plucked the strawberry from its vine and put it into his mouth, savoring the sweetness.
***
The late Sir John Templeton, billionaire investor and founder of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, was once asked what the secret of wealth was. He replied, "Gratitude. If you're not grateful, you're not rich -- no matter how much you have."
Thanksgiving is not about entitlement.
Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
Keeping Faith In A Rich Land
For the wandering Israelites, looking over the threshold into the promised land, the question is this: Can they keep their austere, desert faith in a land of rich vineyards and olive groves? Will they continue to remember the one from whose hand they have received all these benefits? There is a twofold commandment here: "You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land..." (v. 10). Eat and bless -- many, in our materialistic culture, stop at the first part and never get to the second. "Prosperity gospel" preachers croon, "Go ahead, eat your fill," but often neglect to finish the sentence. The way in which we are to "bless the Lord" is detailed in the verses that follow: in short, we are to keep the commandments (v. 11). Verses 14-16 summarize the story of the Exodus from Egypt; if future generations of Israelites will but remember that story, it will keep them focused on the most important spiritual values. There is no such thing as a "self-made" man or woman: We may be tempted to say, "We did it," but the real truth is God has done it all (verses 17-18).
New Testament Lesson
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Sow Bountifully, Receive Bountifully
Harvest is the dominant metaphor in these verses from 2 Corinthians. And where does the harvest come from? It comes from the sowing of seed. Anyone in an agricultural society knows that seed must be sown generously in order to produce. The packet of seeds we bring home from the store always seems to contain far more than is necessary. Yet, nature requires an excess of input in order to yield a generous output. In life, we must sow bountifully, in order to reap bountifully (v. 6). Verse 7 -- "God loves a cheerful giver" -- is, of course, a wonderful stewardship text in that it gets beyond the mere mathematics of giving, delving into the motivation beneath. In the church, giving that honors God is giving that arises out of generosity of heart. Contrary to folk wisdom, it is most definitely not "the bottom line" that ought to concern us -- but whether our giving comes from "the bottom of our hearts." Where does all this seed come from in the first place? It comes from God, of course (v. 10). It's all God's to begin with. We just give something back, in a continual exchange, a reciprocal flow. Not that this is an equal exchange, a quid pro quo -- for God's gift is so vast as to be "indescribable" (v. 15). It is God who has ordained that we should live this way, giving as well as receiving.
The Gospel
Luke 17:11-19
The Ten Lepers
This story is frequently misinterpreted as a simple fable about remembering to say "thank you." Although Emily Post (along with the greeting-card industry) would approve of this interpretation, the story is about far more than that. While it's true that the tenth leper, a Samaritan, returns and thanks Jesus, the more important feature is that social taboos render him unable to respond as the others do, by "showing himself to the priests" (v. 14). The priests would have refused to bless this man since he is still a member of an outcast group -- no longer a leper, but still a Samaritan. Verse 14 also says, "as they went, they were made clean." Notably, the nine are people of great faith, because they set out on this arduous journey with no certainty -- other than Jesus' promise -- that they will in fact be healed. Before their healing, the ten were a dismal brotherhood: Their disease united them across cultural lines. Once their skin cleared up, though, the old differences emerged. The Samaritan was healed, walking along the road with the others, but he then realized he could not return with them to the Jewish priests. Not knowing what else to do, he turned back and prostrated himself before Jesus. Jesus' benediction -- "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well" (v. 19) -- declares that the Lord can work outside the intricate system of ritual law. This is good news for Gentile Christians in Luke's day.
Preaching Possibilities
A certain credit card company ran a television commercial a few years back. It began by showing a rescue helicopter circling a deserted, tropical island. A column of smoke rises from a bonfire on the beach. A distress message is spelled out in coconut shells: "SOS."
In the next scene, the helicopter has landed, and the crew has rushed over to help an apparently unconscious man, lying face-up on the beach. No sooner do they reach him than he leaps up, with a huge grin on his face. The man's wife pops out of some jungle foliage nearby, holding a camera. She's jumping up and down with excitement. "I got the picture!" she seems to be saying.
In the next scene, an announcer informs us the credit card company's running a contest in which the prize is "your own private island." The implication is: It's your island, so you can do whatever you want -- including, presumably, calling in false alarms to the local search-and-rescue people for your own amusement.
It was just a commercial gimmick, of course. The ad agency didn't expect us to take their little drama seriously. But they really did know what they're doing, psychologically, in running that ad. Their approach was shrewd. They were hoping to entice us, the consumers, to enter their contest and become their customers. They were trying to lure us in with the fantasy of entitlement: "It's your island, do whatever you want."
Entitlement is much in the news these days. When the politicians in Washington talk of "entitlements," they mean programs like Social Security and Medicare. These are programs we, as taxpayers, have paid into over the course of many years. When we retire, we quite naturally feel entitled to the benefits for which we've paid.
We all know there are problems with the funding for these programs. Sometime in the next couple of decades, we're going reach the point where more money is flowing out of these funds than is flowing in. If something's not done before then, we'll have a whole lot of angry, entitled people!
Here in this Thanksgiving worship service, it's not so much the politics of entitlement programs that ought to be our focus, as the whole notion of entitlement itself as a theological idea. What does the Bible have to say about entitlement? Is there anything to which God says we're entitled?
Not if you read the book of Deuteronomy. The passage we read is addressed to the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness. These are a desperate, destitute people -- former slaves, all. The Israelites own nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever meager possessions they can carry. Poor as these people are, they have one thing that is of infinite value. They have God's promise to guide them into a land of milk and honey.
In Deuteronomy, chapter 6, Moses makes it absolutely clear that the chosen people, upon entering the promised land, are not to feel entitled to anything:
"When the Lord your God has brought you into the land, [Moses tells them]... a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant -- and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."
-- Deuteronomy 6:10-12
"These things will be yours," the Lord is saying to the Israelites, "but not because you deserve them. They will be yours because I give them of my own free will (and for no other reason)." Is our situation any different here in America, the new promised land?
The pilgrims of Plymouth didn't think so. At the time of the first Thanksgiving feast, they had just come through many months of hunger and privation. More members of their original company had been buried in the ground than walked upright. Yet even so, gratitude to God swelled their hearts; not because they felt entitled to the food they now had in abundance, but because they felt incredibly blessed just to be alive.
We used to have a healthier appreciation of who we are and what we truly deserve, here in America -- and not so long ago as the seventeenth century, either. As recently as 1906, our President, Theodore Roosevelt -- himself a member of our nation's wealthy elite -- demanded that Congress pass a steeply graduated inheritance tax. This made him highly unpopular among his fellow patricians, who feared and loathed an inheritance tax more than anything else. An inheritance tax, which would take some of their vast, accumulated wealth and distribute it for the common good, threatened their sense of entitlement.
But Teddy Roosevelt didn't care. For him, it was a moral issue. Here's what he said: "If ever our people become so sordid as to feel that all that counts is moneyed prosperity, ignoble well-being, effortless ease and comfort, then this nation shall perish, as it will deserve to perish, from the earth." Wealth, he declared, should only be "the foundation on which to build the real life, the life of spiritual and moral effort and achievement."
Roosevelt's efforts met with no immediate success. But he used "the bully pulpit" of the presidency -- ol' T.R. invented that term -- in such a way as to keep the moral issues of wealth and inheritance before the American people. Eight years after Teddy Roosevelt left office, in 1916, Congress finally established an inheritance tax. (Susan Dunn, "Teddy Roosevelt Betrayed," New York Times, August 9, 1999)
Fast-forward to the present day. The whole idea of a graduated inheritance tax -- one that applies disproportionately to the wealthiest Americans, and unapologetically so -- continues to come under periodic attack. This happens because our national sense of entitlement has grown beyond all proportion. We have come so far from the starvation days of the Plymouth colony, and even from the tycoons of the Gilded Age, that we can scarcely remember the lessons our ancestors taught. Will Teddy Roosevelt's words prove prophetic -- his warning that a nation that becomes so enamored of wealth and entitlement "shall perish, as it will deserve to perish, from the earth"? Let's hope not. Yet, it's clear that we are on the wrong road, as a people. Unless we rediscover that message of Moses to the Israelites -- that we are entitled to nothing in this land of milk and honey, that everything is a gift beyond our deserving, for which we can only feel gratitude -- we just may be in for a rude awakening.
On Thanksgiving, may we learn to set our sense of entitlement aside. May we discover the abundant joy that comes from true, heartfelt gratitude!
Prayer For The Day
Great Lord, our God,
we acknowledge that love began with you,
and has filled our cup to overflowing.
Surrounded as we are
by the abundant wealth of this great land,
give us the grace to be properly thankful:
and to exercise the gifts and talents you have given
to fill others' lives with love.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
To Illustrate
"Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty." (letter from Edward Winslow of the Plymouth Colony describing the first Thanksgiving, first published in 1622; chapter 6 of Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth)
These are not the words of a man who feels proud of his possessions, who believes he's entitled to them. They are the words of a devout and grateful Christian believer, who knows that, in this promised land called America, every crop his people gather in, every animal they hunt for food, is a gift of the Almighty.
***
In Daniel Defoe's famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, when the title character finds himself washed up on a desert island, the first thing he does is make a list. It's a list of all the pros and cons of his situation. On one side of his list he writes: I do not have any clothes. On the other side he writes: But it's warm and I don't really need any. On one side: All the provisions were lost. On the other side: But there's plenty of fresh fruit and water on the island. And on down the list he goes.
The longer his list of pros and cons becomes, the more Crusoe comes to discover that his situation is not so desperate as all that. For every problem, there is a corresponding blessing.
There comes a time, later in the novel, when this castaway nearly does give in to despair. But then he finds consolation in the scriptures:
"One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, 'I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' Immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?
'Well then,' said I, 'if God does not forsake me, what matters it, though the world should all forsake me?...' From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable that I should ever have been in any other state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place."
***
Entitlement is the enemy of gratitude, and our culture is awash in entitlement. We live in this nation as if we had it all coming to us, as if we believed our own advertising.... We cannot say simultaneously, "Thank you" and "I had it coming to me," unless we talk out of both sides of our mouths. If we assume we have nothing for which to be thankful, and no one to whom we should be grateful, giving thanks is superfluous, unnecessary, and certainly uncalled-for. The result is life without gratitude, which is life where joy has gone missing.
-- Tim Hart-Andersen, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, from a sermon, "Recovery of Gratitude," preached at the 2004 Presbyterian Church (USA) Stewardship Network Gathering
***
Every day is my best day; this is my life; I'm not going to have this moment again.
-- Bernie Siegel
***
There's a Buddhist story about a monk who was walking through a field when he is confronted by a fierce tiger. The monk backed away, knowing that just beyond him was a cliff and just below that cliff was the sea. The monk was caught between the beast and sea, and so he chose to lower himself over the cliff on a thick vine. As he did so, he was filled with gratitude that the vine could hold him. After his prayer, the monk looked over and saw, growing through the rock on the cliff, a spindly vine with leaves and one bright, red strawberry. He looked up to see the tiger snarling at him and looked down to see the waves leaping and lurching below him. Then the monk plucked the strawberry from its vine and put it into his mouth, savoring the sweetness.
***
The late Sir John Templeton, billionaire investor and founder of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, was once asked what the secret of wealth was. He replied, "Gratitude. If you're not grateful, you're not rich -- no matter how much you have."
