Materialsim Rebellion

A thanksgiving reflection

One of the great struggles of life in a society like ours, is to fight for our right to enchantment; for a world penetrated and illumined by God. Our default, thanks to the enlightenment, is to see the world as a series of nature-forces, atoms and chance not as a sacred gift moment by moment given in love to all of humanity by it’s Lover.

This has endless ramifications for our spirituality. The most pernicious, in my view, being that we’re forever searching for material answers to spiritual questions. Do I feel deep sorrow? Let me medicate my brain. Am I worried about security? Let me take from and plunder the world myself.

But there’s another significant side effect and it’s this; materialism often muddies our grasp of just how much God is for us in our daily, ordinary living.

It depletes our gratitude.

I don’t mean that we’re never thankful, just that we’re never thankful enough or only on the macro things. Which, I say with compassion, not judgement, because gratitude is the great pathway to experiencing God and I feel like we so often miss out on it.

Materialism is eroding our intimacy with God because, in fact, gratitude itself is an actual experience of God. Let me explain.

Our ancestors believed that every single breath was given and sustained by God’s Spirit¹. That the sun, moon and starts did his beckoning, and that each day was intentionally given by Divine Love, not some assumed gravitational necessity². Yes, there is consistence, but only because God wills it in love. Tomorrow is only assured because God is good.

And here’s what that does for us, it makes everything a gift. It makes everything an experience of God. No matter how bad my day is, I still have breath because of the love and presence of God. The sun still shines, birds still sing, I can see beauty with my eyes, contemplate sonnets with my heart, and listen to music that touches the depths of me. All personally given in unceasing love by a God who showers me constantly with good things.

This makes the world sacramental, enchanted, a window to heaven. Suddenly, everything becomes God’s love letter. The whole world lights up as a living gospel. Every second a moment to be thankful for.

And it also makes gratitude one of the truest forms of prayer.

Because the more I can see what I usually can’t - these often forgotten gifts of life - the more I can see God’s love pouring out all over and around me. The more I can see that, regardless of my feelings, my life state is saturated in God. I cannot hide, nor run, nor ever be abandoned by him³.

This external celebrating then moves inwardly and my soul is gently lifted. I begin to feel as though God’s love is so profound and unceasing that I can’t help but praise him for it. A liteness enters me, joy wells up, my suffering loses its hopeless sting and I realise that I live in the womb of God.

The more I thank God, the more I see him. The more I see him, the more I experience him.

Gratitude is the antidote to depression, to anxiety, to fear and hopelessness because it gives us a right view of the world. A right view of how involved and caring God is. I know this to be personally true, as hard as it can be to believe it in the moment.

So, let me encourage you this thanksgiving. Practice materialism rebellion. Get curious, study the ordinary, discover it as heaven piercing through. Let the world light up again with the fire of divine love. Hear it for the sacred song that it is.

Thank God for every pedal on every flower in the garden outside. Thank him for your skin cells, your eyebrows, your fingers and toes. Thank him for all the sunrises and sunsets, his love-poem to you. Thank him for every breath, every time you’ve made love, each glass of wine and every single grape watered, sustained, harvested and pressed to bring it to you.

Because all of this vast, beautiful life is personal, intentional. It’s a song, God’s song, crying out from eternity past for the rest of the age saying, “I love you, will you be mine?”.

In gratitude, we tune in.
May you tune in, today.

All my love,

Strahan.

1. Job 27:3, 33:4

2. Matthew 5:45-47

3. Psalm 139:7